


Britain Boys

by Nyxelestia



Series: Britain Boys [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-29
Updated: 2011-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyxelestia/pseuds/Nyxelestia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>If you want some music for this fic, <a href="http://deathjunke.livejournal.com/112887.html#cutid5">check out the fanmix</a>!</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> If you want some music for this fic, [check out the fanmix](http://deathjunke.livejournal.com/112887.html#cutid5)!

Their first meeting hadn’t exactly been the most…auspicious, to say the least.

But then, twelve year old boys weren’t exactly known for their maturity, anyway.

It was right after Hunith Emrys had become Prime Minister, and Uther had made a resolution to be a more active king in the affairs of the people, and that meant making nice, publicly, with the new PM – even though he disagreed with her on…everything, apparently.

She wasn’t exactly normal. Her background was far from the privileged childhood that befitted most of the rest of Parliament. Even her son had lived in their small, suburban maisonette until she had become Prime Minister (and before that, gasp, a council estate!). It was a wonder the Labour Party elected her, really, considering just what her son was.

Arthur had sat grimly in various rooms around the palace or at school watching the elections, and after Emrys had been announced, he made sure to study her carefully, and even learned what little there was to know about her son – his age exactly. ‘Isn’t it weird?’ the media asked, ‘That the Prince of Wales and the new Prime Minister’s son were both born on the same day!’

(Arthur was adamant about reminding anyone who would listen that he was born almost twelve hours earlier…or he would be, except talking about his birthday meant talking about the day Mother died).

So he watched, instead, every piece of news about the election, every update, every little trifle, until finally, it was over.

“One day, you will be doing this,” Father had told him only a year back, before they had both gone for Father’s coronation.

But it wasn’t the coronation, now, and Arthur had spent two weeks getting exasperated at the media flare that blew up when Father offered to throw a celebratory banquet for the new Prime Minister – and she had accepted. And right now, they were preparing to go downstairs for yet another banquet in what was for Arthur a long line of banquets held in Buckingham Palace.

But for him, there would be one advantage, this time – there would finally be someone else his age there.

The Prime Minister, Hunith Emrys’ son – Merlin.

“Be nice to her boy,” Father had said when he’d mentioned it. “We want to get along with them. I know it will be difficult for us, but it is something we have to bear. Emrys is getting her son to set a good example for the nation with his powers, so the least we can do is set a good example for the nation and reach out to them.”

“Yes, Father,” Arthur had said before they went downstairs. In the garden, he kept a sharp eye out until he found Merlin.

Merlin was skinny as a twig with ears, and he was very shy, staying close to his mother or his security-guard-slash-aide-slash-whatever-he-was-guy at all times…not that Arthur blamed him. He knew that feeling, and while he had a lifetime of learning to work past it, Merlin had only been in the spotlight for a little less than a year or two. Besides which, he and Merlin were the only kids here, and everyone else was staying away from Merlin. Even if he was the Prime Minister’s son, he was still a sorcerer, and who knows, maybe Hunith would use him to enchant people her way.

As Father went up to talk to someone, Arthur took several deep breaths, and walked up to the new Prime Minister’s son, while trying to think of those photographs of his mother. They say the stronger you visualize someone you love, the harder it is to be enchanted.

While many, many eyes turned to them, Arthur held out his hand to Merlin and said, “Hello.”

Merlin stared at him for several seconds, and Arthur started fidgeting. Merlin’s guard/aide/whoever gave him a gentle nudge in the back, and Merlin’s hand shot up, clasping Arthur’s hand in a tight, nervous grip, and he blurted, “Prince Arthur! You’re Prince Arthur!”

As the guards backed away slowly, apparently to give them some space, Arthur just snorted. “You noticed,” he drawled. Really, unless the tabloid rumors were outright lies, then even that grain of truth told in every lie said Merlin should be smarter than this (unless he was cheating – he was a sorcerer, you couldn’t really rule that out).

“You’re Prince Arthur!” Merlin repeated, slightly calmer but no less flabbergasted. Really, did he have to point out the obvious?

“Yeah, I know,” Arthur said, muttering under his breath, “Idiot.”

The other boy’s grip stilled and slackened abruptly. Shit, had he heard?

“No, I’m not,” Merlin said. “I have the best marks in my class.”

“And yet it took you this long to figure out who I was,” Arthur sneered. Why the hell did he of all people have to be the new Prime Minister’s son? Ugh.

Merlin pulled his hand away. Arthur’s hand felt suddenly cold, despite having only held Merlin’s hand for a few moments.

“Better an idiot than an ass!” he cried out sharply, chin jutted out in defiance.

By now, a lot more people were watching them. Arthur knew, he knew, he should care more, pay more attention to how this would appear to others. But Merlin was just so…so…infuriating!

“At least I don’t have big, stupid ears like you!” Arthur hissed.

Merlin blushed, aforementioned ears turning bright red, and said, “At least I’m not a giant prat like you! There’s no reason to be so mean!”

“ _You’re_ a reason,” Arthur said.

“And you’re pathetic,” Merlin retorted.

Arthur saw red.

Next thing he knew, he and Merlin had to be pulled off each other from where they were on the ground, rolling around and attacking each other with the kind of viciousness only preteen boys could muster. Arthur was using all that his knees, fists, elbows, and skull had to offer, while Merlin’s eyes kept skittering from blue to gold and back again as he used sparing but strong pushes of magic against Arthur.

“Let go of me!” Arthur growled at Leon as he and Merlin were pulled away from each other, still waving his fists at Merlin.

“Will, lemme go!” he heard Merlin demand of his own bodyguard, still feeling occasional pulses of pressure from nowhere against his joints.

But they were both duly ignored as they were pulled away in opposite directions.

Their next meeting took place three hours, two lectures, and a yelling later, just after dinner was over and the grown-ups were moving on to cocktails and socializing.

They stood in the foyer, feeling the eyes of dozens of reporters and hundreds of grown-ups, many of whom weren’t even bothering to pretend they weren’t watching.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur ground out, Father’s hand on his shoulder.

Merlin’s eyes flashed a furious gold, but Hunith Emrys laid a careful hand on the back of Merlin’s neck.

“I’m sorry, too,” he bit back with about as much sincerity.

Well, at least they could agree on that.

“He used magic against me!” Arthur had tried protesting at home when Father had made him sit on that uncomfortable couch in his office to be yelled at. Mentioning someone else had magic usually made Father more sympathetic to him.

But this time it was not to be. Much.

“I know,” Father said, turning to face him from behind the desk. When he yelled, he paced or faced the walls in his rage. When he talked to Arthur in this room it was always from behind the desk. “It’s deplorable that he did so. But be as it may, I have no intentions of just sitting back and playing pretty figurehead like my own father.”

Arthur wondered what his Grandfather had been like, in private, what Grandmother and Father and old newsreels couldn’t tell him.

“If I am to be able to have influence over this country, I will need to start with forging a strong bond with the Prime Minister,” Father said, sitting down in his chair and pouring himself some Scotch. Arthur wondered why Father kept drinking it, because he’d tried it once when he found himself alone in the room for a few moments, and it was awful. “If I want her to listen to me and my advice…” Father sighed and took a big gulp, drinking half his glass of the amber drink. “I am at a severe disadvantage as it is. I am young-” _No, I am!_ Thought Arthur. _You’re old!_ “-and have limited experience in state affairs in comparison to your grandmother’s long and established history. Do not make things any more difficult for me than they already are – even if the boy has magic.”

Arthur sighed. “Yes, Father.”

“I do not like how blind people are becoming to the dangers of magic, but be as it may, sorcerers are slowly moving to having the same rights as the rest of the general population and that is a reality we have to face.” Then Father sighed as he looked down into his now-empty glass. “Hopefully, at least, this Merlin boy will set a good example with his magic, and perhaps teach others with magic to fight against their darker inclinations.”

“Yes, Father,” Arthur repeated numbly.

The media had a field day with it, field weeks, really, speculating on whether or not this would be a predictor for the relationship between the new king and the new Prime Minister. Hunith wasn’t exactly known for her sympathy to the privileged class, and Uther was infamous for his hateful outburst against those with magic that came about when Mother had died.

(Luckily, it wasn’t a good predictor.)

Arthur at least had the smug victory of people wondering if this fight was a result of magic, of such a negative energy in such a young boy (or maybe just such a negative boy? Arthur could definitely believe that.) ‘Really!’ went the general media. ‘If Hunith isn’t going to hide the fact her son is a sorcerer, she could at least suppress his magic!’ And Arthur couldn’t agree more.

Their third ‘meeting’ was completely uneventful, seeing each other from a distance and passing close to each other, as well, studiously ignoring each other. The press didn’t much like this, and instead spent most of their time wondering if Arthur’s matured or if Merlin’s just enchanted him. (Of course Arthur matured, he didn’t need to enchanted to be nice!)

Father seemed pleased by this. Or, well, at least not upset, which considering his mood lately was close enough.

At their fourth meeting, they said ‘hello’ to each other and absolutely nothing else, which even the press remarked upon, if only due to sadness that the boys hadn’t given them a story. Really, Arthur was the Prince of Wales and Merlin was a sorcerer, it should have been an easy story, and Arthur drank in the expression on Father’s face when nothing happened despite this.

Father actually nodded at Arthur after that, and he decided if things stayed like this, he could put up with that Emrys boy.

At their fifth meeting, they had even worked together.

It was at some environmental expo. Morgana was actually _here_ for this one, and had quickly made friends with someone named Gwen, and was trying to coax her into talking to Merlin.

“So who are you?” Arthur asked this Gwen person carefully. Not carefully enough, though, judging by the way Morgana elbowed him in the ribs. “Ow!”

“You could _try_ being polite!” Morgana snapped, before turning to pick something from the table of snacks and drinks before them all, much shorter than the main table for all the children present. After all, children were the future, and they would be bearing the brunt of global warming and pollution and all that rot.

“It’s okay,” Gwen said, with a cheerful smile, beaming at him, and even smiling hesitatingly at Merlin as he came up to them, who smiled back broadly. “My dad is Thomas DeGrance.”

“You mean the eco-robot guy?” Merlin asked.

Gwen badly-hid a snort of laughter as Arthur frowned. “Eco-robot?”

Morgana huffed in disgust, like she always did, these days.

“They’re enviro-mentally friendly machines designed to work with nature instead of against it,” Gwen recited proudly.

“And they killed your mum.”

They all turned to see another kid there. He was short but bulky, and a little older than them, maybe thirteen at most.

“And who are you?” Merlin asked derisively. How come Morgana didn’t seem to find anything wrong with him being rude?

“Cenred,” the boy said. “And – a robot he made killed her mum. We all know it.” He sneered at Gwen. “How does it feel, knowing your dad killed your mum?”

“He didn’t,” Gwen said, tears in her eyes as Morgana pulled her into a protective embrace. “It was an accident. They worked together on these eco-robots and-”

“It’s still his fault she’s dead,” Cenred said victoriously.

“No it’s not, you prick,” Merlin snapped, stepping in front of Gwen as Morgana pulled her back and into a much tighter, more comforting, embrace.

“Do you know who I am?” Cenred asked.

“Does it matter?” Merlin asked.

“My father is the Third Duke of Fife. I’m exactly 60th in line for the throne,” Cenred said, looking down at Merlin. “Which is more than you will ever be, Emrys. Go back to your little council flat or coven-hole or wherever – go back where you belong.”

And Arthur had enough of this guy.

“Do you know who _I_ am?”

Cendred whipped around to see Arthur standing there, and frowned. “What are you doing here? Your Highness?”

“My dad is the King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,” Arthur said calmly. “And I’m first in line for the throne – which is more than you will ever be.”

“Well, then, that makes two of us – three counting your cousin-”

“-I’m not like you!” Morgana growled.

“-who were born better than this witchboy here,” Cendred said, jerking his thumb at Merlin.

“At least he’s not a stupid jerk like you,” Arthur said. “That makes him at least a better person than you.”

Cendred stared at Arthur incredulously.

“Go away,” Merlin said, moving to stand beside Arthur. “You’re mean and none of us want you here.”

“Fine, I don’t want to be here!” Cendred snapped, grabbing an hors d'oeuvre from the table and stomping off.

There was silence. Then:

“Thank you,” Gwen said from behind them, before looking at Merlin. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”

Arthur nodded. Merlin just looked sad. “Of course I’d do that. You’re nice.”

“Thank you, I just – I dunno, aren’t warlocks supposed to be mean?” Gwen asked.

“No,” Merlin said, even sadder. Gwen’s eyes widened.

“I didn’t mean you! I’m just surprised. I’m glad you’re nice. All the other kids here are so mean, they don’t like my dad because his robots aren’t superheroes or anything.”

“They totally are, they save rainforests and stuff,” Merlin said, a smile growing on his face.

Arthur rolled his eyes and turned to the table, pondering what he should eat.

“…did you mean that?” he heard several minutes later.

He turned to see Merlin looking at him, almost imploringly. “About me being a good person?” he added, looking almost desperate for an answer.

Yes, he meant it. But he wasn’t going to say it first.

“Even idiots can be good people,” he said stiffly. “Even idiotic sorcerers.”

Merlin scowled at him, and Arthur realized – or rather, remembered – that there were a lot of people watching them, again, and instead grabbed something from the table and offered it to Merlin.

“These are good,” he said hastily. “You should try it.”

Merlin frowned in confusion, and Arthur jerked his head, slightly towards the press.

“They’re watching us,” he muttered from the corner of his mouth. “So take it and eat it and we’ll part ways and my father won’t yell at me for causing a ruckus and your mother won’t yell at you for…whatever.”

Merlin nodded, wide-eyed and taking it and thanking him somewhat hastily and walking back to his mother, and Arthur rolled his eyes and went to look at the rest of the exhibits, making sure that Morgana was still taking care of Gwen, and that Cenred was staying well away from them all.

The media had picked up on this too, of course, pictures of them standing together, protecting Gwen and Morgana behind them, were all over the place, and the media just took it and ran. Even the Guardian said the monarchy might not be so bad, after all, and that Britain could stand to have them a little more involved with the British people. And with the right influence, maybe magic can even be harnessed for good? It is possible, whatever the stupid stereotypes people like to believe otherwise – as went the millions of articles speculating about royalty and magic.

“Good,” Father said simply, nodding and hmm-ing to himself as he read through the various articles and reports on the matter. “People need to see the royal family working together with the common person in a positive way. This will lead people to see me working with Emrys as an extension of this goodwill.”

“Right,” Arthur said.

Arthur didn’t quite meet Merlin the sixth time, so much as see him from a distance - at first, anyway.

Morgana wanted to go to the massive Samhain ritual at Stonehenge.

“Absolutely not!” Father had said the moment she’d asked.

“Why would you even want to?” Arthur asked. Both of them just ignored him as they glared at each other, so he took another bite of his dinner, grumbling about his insane family. He blamed George III.

“Why not?” Morgana snapped. “You said you had to improve relations with the magical community so you could get closer to the Prime Minister-”

“Not at the cost of your health and safety,” Uther said, setting down his fork to focus all his attention on her.

“It used to be tradition, you know, for the royal family to attend a festival now and then,” Morgana said in her know-it-all voice. “Why not bring it back? It would be a great way-”

“It also used to be tradition for cousins and siblings to marry each other,” Uther said. Debate voice, here it comes. There was a good chance plates would be thrown before dessert could get here. “Does that mean I’ll let you marry Arthur? No.”

Nausea curled in Arthur’s gut at the thought of marrying Morgana, and he looked rather mournfully at his dinner. It was one of his favorites, too. He quickly took another bite before they could ruin his appetite for good.

“Please?” Morgana changed tactics after a few back-and-forths with Father. “You can make it look like you’re just trying to rebuild good relations with the magical community! And by sending me instead of Arthur it’ll be a gesture but not _too_ obvious an effort or anything, then-”

“Morgana, it’s too dangerous.”

“It is not! It’s a _festival_. There are a lot of other kids there, it’s perfectly safe!”

“For sorcerers, Morgana, not normal people,” Uther said.

“There are a lot of ‘normal people’ there, too,” Morgana snapped, looking about ready to cry.

When Father refused yet again, she did cry.

It took another two days for Father to finally relent - though him saying yes had a lot less to do with Morgana’s campaign for permission and a lot more about the news that Merlin Emrys was going to be there - and his decision to make Arthur go, too.

“Why do I have to go?!” Arthur demanded, indignant. “Morgana’s the only one that wants to, she can go alone-”

“Because she’s not the Prince of Wales - you are,” Uther said. “Make nice with the boy - especially when there are cameras around. And he will be among his people, so for god’s sake don’t fight!”

Merlin didn’t _look_ like he was ‘with his people’, any more than all the other kids there, all wearing ritualistic white tunics that went down to their shins, worn over either regular clothes or Halloween costumes for the duration of the spiritual part of the ceremony.

Arthur couldn’t tell what Merlin was wearing under his tunic from his safe distance away for those not taking part with the Druids.

One thing he could tell, though, was that Morgana had got her hands on a tunic, somehow, clutching it under her jacket, eyes sharp and body tense as they moved nearer to the ritual circle. It didn’t take Arthur long to figure out her plan.

“Are you crazy?!” he hissed at her as realization - and panic - dawned on him.

“No - just don’t tell Uther, and run from security with this so they don’t know I’m in the ritual,” was all she said, before shoving her suspiciously-ritual-tunic-colored-jacket at him and slipping out of their guards’ sight before he could hit her (or at least stomp on her foot) for her insanity.

It took quite a bit of sneaking around, often waving Morgana’s jacket around near his dismally noticeable self in the dim corners of various sweet stands stationed in the outer reaches of the festival during the short but grave ceremony, but when Morgana snuck back to his side with one of the biggest smiles on her face and a promise to return the favor, he could conceded it had been worth it (and would hopefully be worth the yelling he was going to get from Father later on when the security detail reported all this to him).

Merlin didn’t have that tunic on when they actually met, but he had what looked to be deep-blue jeans to match the royal-blue robe he wore over, knee-length and covered with silvery stars and moons, and behind him, his security guard was holding a fake magic staff and a faker white beard.

“Are you supposed to be Merlin? Like from the legends?” Arthur asked disdainfully.

“More like from Disney,” Merlin grumbled. “And it doesn’t look like you’re doing any better.”

Arthur looked down at himself. With his fake-ermine-lined red robe and stupid plastic gold crown of the sort no respectable monarch _ever_ wore, complete with a sceptre and orb and plastic sword dangling rather limply from his hip, he could concede that Merlin had a point.

“So our parents are pants at picking out costumes,” Arthur said.

“I fear for the Kingdom,” Merlin said gravely. Before he could check himself, Arthur burst out laughing.

He was just composing himself when Morgana came up in her butterfly get-up, wearing her fake wings now that she wasn’t trying to hide from everyone.

“Merlin!” she greeted happily, shaking his hand.

“Lady Morgana, nice to properly meet you.”

“And you as well. I never got to thank you for helping Gwen at the environmental convention.”

“Hey!” Arthur cried out indignantly. “I helped, too, and you never thanked me!”

“Because you have a big head and I’m not going to help you make it bigger!” she snapped at him, before turning back to Merlin. “I saw the little wooden pumpkins you enchanted - they were brilliant!”

“Oh, they’re nothing,” Merlin said, blushing of all things. Arthur’s blood boiled as he thought of the possibility that Merlin might have a crush on her - especially since it seemed, unlike how it was with most boys, she _wouldn’t_ hit him for it. “But thank you.”

And they walked away, leaving Arthur there, flummoxed.

“They left me here!” Arthur cried out.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Your Highness,” Leon said. “Shall we go and get some of the beverages and find a nice spot to view the fireworks?”

Arthur sighed, still reeling from being abandoned by Morgana and Merlin both. And he hadn’t even wanted to come to this stupid festival. “Fine.”

When Father was yelling at them the next day, Arthur didn’t feel remotely bad about sitting there and saying nothing in Morgana’s defense.

She left him there. And took Merlin with her! But mostly that she left him there. Merlin wasn’t involved at all. He wasn’t.

Arthur sat there smugly as she ended up taking most of the blame.

At their seventh meeting, they dutifully ignored each other, both of them learning by now to not embarrass their parents, and instead socializing with the other kids when they went off promoting the plight of homeless teens in Britain.

Except that Arthur found a hard time even talking to these kids, who actually grew up on council estates or on the streets and viewed him with suspicion despite the fact he’d never done anything to them. And he didn’t even have Merlin around to take cues from, as he was with the other sorcerers in the ‘courtyard’ outside, away from the building’s magic suppressors. It was a grotty square of cement and rubbish, but despite the wretched nature of the area, the sorcerers here seemed much happier and more relaxed there.

Arthur wondered if it was because there were no suppressors out here, or if they just liked Merlin better.

When the two groups joined together for photographs, Arthur fought down the strong bitterness rising inside of him at the sight of the genuine smiles Merlin was getting from the kids, so sharply different to Arthur from the carefully manipulated and dishearteningly fake smiles Arthur was getting from his own group.

Eventually, it was too dark to stay outside, and everyone had to go back inside, something which all the sorcerers appeared to be dreading completely.

Arthur sat, trying not to fume, near Merlin, as they talked to the teens about their poor damned lives. Merlin, like most of the other sorcerers, was lying slumped against the wall, ill within the confines of the center’s strong nighttime magic suppressors. But even then, Arthur was taking his cues from Merlin, who once upon a time was poor like these kids and could actually relate to them.

A part of Arthur hoped to never be able to relate to them.

Another part wished he could.

By the end of the night, when he ran into Merlin in the carpark in the front of the center, Merlin was snickering and looking amused, despite how ill he looked and must have felt, reacting sharply to the suppressors in the building.

“Excuse me for having some class,” Arthur said. “Unlike you and your types.”

“You didn’t have to be so posh,” Merlin said, his humor suddenly lost, now just looking ill. “I didn’t really grow up for long on a council estate, either. We moved out years ago, I barely remember it.”

“Close enough,” Arthur mumbled. “I’ve seen pictures of the place you and your mother used to live in before you moved to Number 10. It was tiny.”

“It’s not your palace but it’s certainly not tiny,” Merlin snapped, and whirled on his heel and stomped away, nearly stumbling over himself until his bodyguard held onto his arm to support him.

The press didn’t catch what was said, but it did get the picture of the two furiously walking away from each other in all their “childish fury”, and Father sighed in disappointment when he saw it.

The eighth time they met was when Arthur was getting his check-up from Gaius.

He was sitting there in the doctor’s patient examination room, quite pleasantly, letting Gaius tut over him, when Merlin wandered in, carrying a book and a bag, and saying, “Gaius, I’m here, and I practiced the spell set you gave me…last night…”

He trailed off, staring at Arthur, and Arthur turned to Gaius and demanded, “What’s he doing here?!”

“I tutor him, Arthur, in magic” Gaius said, before turning to Merlin. “Just as well you’re both here – after spending an afternoon in that magic-suppressing youth center, I wanted to check up on you, as well.”

“Clearly he’s fine,” Arthur grumbled.

“…well now I am,” Merlin snapped. Arthur remembered sharply just how ill Merlin looked that night as they’d left, and then promptly shoved that image out of his head. He wasn’t going to start doling out sympathy to a magical git.

“I’m strong like that,” Merlin added.

“Strong or not, your body guard said you collapsed once you got home, and vomited,” Gaius said. “I need to at least see that there are no long term affects.”

Arthur stared at Merlin in surprise. He didn’t know much about suppressors, but he did know that reaction to them was related to how powerful the sorcerer was. Was Merlin powerful, to get so ill after just a quarter of a day in a suppressant building? Or were those suppressants that strong? Or was this a normal reaction?

He wanted to ask these questions, now that they were there.

But, he was the Prince of Wales, and Merlin was a witchboy. Arthur had to spend too much time talking to him as it was.

Gaius fussed over them both some more, and they glared.

Arthur coughed a bit, but Gaius didn’t seem to care much once Merlin admitted to dizziness, but then Arthur admitted to a headache, and Merlin said he had an even stronger one-

Then Gaius stopped, looked at them both, and said, “I don’t believe it! You two are really restoring so such childish antics?”

Arthur looked down at his knees, slightly shamed at Gaius’s scolding. The man may also have some latent magic, Arthur knew he used it in his medicines (though never any he’d taken) – but he’d been around for a long time, and he could sometimes say things to Gaius and know that even if the physician reported to his father, he was willing to leave some things out. His opinion…mattered.

Merlin’s, however, did not.

As such it was quite easy to refuse to say anything to him, even offer a glance of camaraderie, as Gaius continued to scold them while he ushered them out of his patient room, through his waiting room (which seated someone who appeared both important and impatient), and into his office, seating Arthur on one end of the desk and Merlin on the other, Merlin’s bag on the desk. He stood by where he, himself, would usually sit, and had a hand on each of their shoulders.

“Now, you two, I’m not foolish enough to think you’ll actually apologize or even be nice, so I won’t ask that of you,” Gaius said. “What I do expect is for you to behave _civilly_ while I go and talk to a patient. It should not be long by any means. Arthur, your car should be here in around fifteen minutes, anyway. Merlin, you can read ahead into today’s chapter while you wait for me.”

He stood back, taking his hands with him, and repeated yet again, “Civil!” before quickly walking out the door to his patient.

Arthur tracked his progress, grimacing as Gaius kept the door half-closed, before turning back to see Merlin opening his book and flicking through the pages, before settling about a third of the way through it. He squinted for the title.

 _Annus Secundus Magicis_

He frowned, before taking in the various little notes and other typical bylines across the cover. A magic book…for people in their second year of studying magic? Well, they were both Year 8...so sorcerers started studying at secondary, then? But schools don’t teach magic so why-

“You’re staring at me,” Merlin said accusingly.

“I’m staring at your book,” Arthur said. “Trying to see what you’re so deficient in as to require tutoring.” He smirked and said, “I guess your mother doesn’t have as much faith in state schools as she thought, hm?”

Merlin snapped his book shut. “State schools aren’t allowed to offer courses in magic. If I want to learn I have to get tutoring!”

“Gaius’s foremost profession is that of a doctor…maths, sciences, he could tutor you in all those, probably has to,” Arthur continued. He’d glimpsed the Daily Mail’s occasional article questioning PM Emrys’ stance on education, how much faith she could have in state education when her own son got such prestigious and private tutoring, even if Gaius reportedly didn’t charge for it.

“I don’t need tutoring in those areas, I get teaching,” Merlin said. “Gaius tutors lots of kids in magic-”

“Yeah, kids who go to schools like mine,” Arthur said cheerfully. He’d also read somewhere else – he wasn’t sure where, maybe The Telegraph? The Mail? Eh, they were practically the same, the articles they ran – about the knot Merlin’s mother was stuck with. It was a rather obvious and well known fact that the Labour Party’s current strategy for dealing with the fact the Prime Minister’s own son was a sorcerer was to downplay that fact as much as possible. If the Prime Minister were to expend effort in justifying Merlin’s tutoring, it would be by expounding on how magic Merlin was.

As funny as it was to read about, watching Merlin turn red as a cherry was proving to be even funnier.

“You know what I think?”

“I don’t care what you think,” Merlin said.

“I think you’re getting tutoring and pretending it’s magic lessons!” he crowed. Merlin didn’t get to be friends with Morgana and charm all those homeless kids and make people like him even though he had magic and be clever on top of all that. There had to be something in there, something besides the magic. This was clearly it.

Clearly.

“I’m learning magic you prick,” Merlin cried out. “Just because you’re only passing your classes because you’re the Prince of Wales doesn’t mean we all depend on our parents’ rank to get us through.”

“I get good marks because I’m intelligent, not because I’m a prince,” Arthur snapped, firmly refusing to remembering all the fawning over him many of his teachers did every year. Morgana, homeless youth, way too many of the people – Merlin didn’t get to charm his teachers, too. (Or enchantment. That had to be it. Enchantment.)

“Yeah, of course, you keep telling yourself that,” Merlin snorted, picking up his book again. He cracked it open, and as he found his page he said, “It’s not like the Crown even does anything, these days – you don’t have to pass your classes, do you? You get to just wander around being mean to people because they’ll let you-”

“I’m not mean to people just because they’ll let me,” Arthur said. “You’re just a git who deserves it.”

Merlin winced, but seemed determined all the same.

Well so was Arthur.

“Let’s see that book, then?” Arthur said, hopping off his own chair to wander around the desk, where Merlin was getting off his own seat and backing away, wary. “Give me your book.”

“So you can rip out all the pages and crumple them up?” Merlin snarled, snapping it closed again and pulling it tightly to his chest. “No thanks. This is the third copy of this book I’ve had to get. I’m not letting another bully rip it up!”

“I’m not going to rip it up, you idiot,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Merlin’s defensiveness. “And I bet they didn’t, anyway. You’re the Prime Minister’s son, why would they beat you up? You’re just using that as an excuse to not show me that you’re really reading one of your school textbook-”

“It’s a _magic_ book, because I’m _magic_ ,” Merlin said. “So no one cares who my mum is.”

Arthur rolled his eyes and said, “Right,” And then lunged for the book.

He found himself on the floor several feet away a moment later, and looked up to see gold seeping out of Merlin’s shocked eyes.

“You…you used magic against me!” he shouted.

“You attacked me!” Merlin shouted back, and he quickly shoved the book back into his bag on the desk and Arthur lunged again, and Merlin attacked with his fist this time.

Arthur barely got the chance to strike back when suddenly Gaius’ voice was shouting, “Boys!” and there was a sharp, painful tug on his ear, and then he and Merlin were both wincing as Gaius dragged them by their ears out to the waiting room, going on and on about civility and childishness and how he only left them alone for five minutes-

“He started it!” Merlin said, still trying to reach angrily at Arthur.

“ _He_ did!” Arthur insisted, snatching back at the other boy. He just wanted to see the stupid book, no need to start a fight over it!

“I don’t care who started it, I’m ending it,” Gaius snapped, shoving Arthur into one chair, then taking Merlin to the other side of the room and shoving him there. “No moving, and no talking! Not a word, either of you.”

Gaius huffed back into the patient room apologetically, and Arthur crossed his arms at Merlin and glared.

Merlin glared back.

He sat there, waiting for when Merlin would cast a spell on him (because he would, they weren’t allowed to move but Merlin didn’t need to).

It felt rather anticlimactic when in the end, Arthur was retrieved by Leon, and Merlin, while glaring at him the whole way out, did nothing.

“Your father is not going to be happy about this,” Leon said after hearing Gaius’ words.

Father wasn’t.

Especially not when pictures from a security camera of Gaius dragging them fighting were posted all over the newspapers.

“People next door heard you, Arthur,” Father snapped angrily, as Arthur sat on the couch in his father’s office, clutching fiercely at the edge of the seat next to his thigh. The old velvet was indenting as a result. “What the devil is wrong with you, Arthur? You were so well behaved until recently…”

Arthur continued to look forward sullenly, until suddenly his father was looming over him and saying, “I asked you a question.”

“It’s Merlin,” Arthur said carefully, trying to form his words. He wasn’t going to just blurt things out anymore. “He’s…infuriating!”

Father frowned, turning away. “A subtle change of emotion…hm…that could very well be within his range of magic…”

It didn’t feel like magic. He was still able to think of and interact with everyone else just fine, it was only Merlin.

But he let himself be prodded by Gaius, anyway, who sighed and said, “I don’t know who you think could have possibly managed to enchant Arthur, but they haven’t.”

Arthur rather wished they did.

“It’s not like anything really happened,” Arthur said as soon as Gaius was gone. “Gaius pulled us apart before we could really fight.”

“It doesn’t matter what _actually_ happened, it matters what people _think_ happened!” Father nearly shouted. It took all of Arthur’s strength not to cower back into the couch.

Father eventually stopped pacing somewhere near his desk, had another amber drink, and squeezing the bridge of his nose, he said, “I understand that you think nothing happened – but enough happened for a photograph, and if a photograph is taken, then something happened, understand?”

Arthur swallowed and nodded.

“Luckily,” Father said, pressing some buttons on the phone on his desk to summon someone in. “It goes both ways.”

So their ninth meeting ended up being a few days later, when the Prime Minister brought Merlin along for her weekly meeting with Father, and while it wasn’t a press conference, there were plenty of cameras around as Arthur stuck out his hand towards Merlin and said, curt and pointedly forced, “I’m apologize for my role in our fight.”

Merlin appeared to be gritting his teeth just as much as Arthur was as he shook Arthur’s hand and said, “I’m sorry, too.”

A hallway and a half later outside the office where they met and talked, Hunith Emrys looked down at them, seeming cross and disappointed, while Uther just rolled his eyes.

“I’m not sure they could have been any more reluctant short of refusing to say anything,” she said ruefully.

“Better than nothing,” he said to her. “I’ll take what I can get.”

“We’re right here,” Merlin grumbled.

“Forget it, they can’t hear us,” Arthur said. “Or won’t.”

Above them, Father said, “Well, they’ve already made their opinions on any kind of joint birthday party known, and at this point I’d be rather wary of their fighting to try and gamble on that kind of publicity.” Arthur grimaced. While he doubted his birthday would be any more miserable than it was already slated to be, at least he wouldn’t get stuck with the idiot.

“What about Christmas?” Hunith asked as they continued into the office.

“Right. Here,” Merlin hissed.

Arthur gave up trying to say anything. Let Merlin ride on the last few waves of indignation. He’d learn better soon enough.

“Might be too soon, it’s not even a week after their birthday,” Father said.

“And we can’t really do much, if anything, for Yule,” she said.

Arthur felt a momentary flash of gratitude that he was already born not on Christmas, and wondered how Merlin felt with his birthday so frequently being right on Yule.

Then he forcibly reminded himself he didn’t care.

“Let’s just avoid any joint anything between the boys, specifically, for now, then,” Emrys said.

Arthur was flooded with relief on hearing that, and then he caught Merlin’s eye, and all he could think as their parents sat down was, _Well I guess we can agree on this much._

After that they were both whisked away while their parents went on to matters of state, and later Arthur glared at Morgana as she sniggered over the way every other news channel was replaying that clip over and over again, alternating between trying to measure how well their parents were getting along and mocking them for their ‘childish antics’.

It was a slow news day.

Slow news day or not, Arthur was glad to make it through that Children in Need gala without having to talk to Merlin much. So yes, the ninth meeting was what he’d call a success.

Their tenth meeting was when they got kidnapped.


	2. Kidnapping

Merlin was scared.

He had been in Hyde Park with Will, enjoying the fresh winter weather while reading his new Animorphs book. Well, he was reading, Will was standing guard like always.

“I’m your body guard, kiddo,” Will had said when Merlin had complained of Will being no fun anymore.

“You used to be more fun,” Merlin had said. “You were always my bodyguard before!”

“Yeah, but your mum wasn’t Prime Minister, before,” he’d said, ruffling Merlin’s hair before gently guiding him back to the _one bench_ in the whole park he had deemed safe for Merlin. “Things were different when she was just Foreign Secretary.”

Merlin had sighed and gone back to reading about kids turning into animals and saving the world. No one ever made them sit on only one bench just to read a book in the park. They could probably sit on any bench they pleased and no one would mind.

Scant months ago, he would have protested, but when Mum became Prime Minister, Will had sat him down and told him about all the people that would want to hurt Mum and would hurt Merlin to hurt Mum, and those who would hurt Merlin because he’s magic, and Merlin had listened to him ever since.

Suddenly, Will had grabbed Merlin’s arm, lifting him up and dragging him up.

“Will!” Merlin had protested as he shoved the book into his schoolbag.

“Get to the car,” Will had said, voice deep and low and terrifying, and Merlin listened, running to the car alongside Will, shielded by Will’s body.

Except the other man there for Merlin, Old Man Simmons, another guard and the driver, had been shouting something at them, before he’d suddenly fallen silent, and Merlin had stumbled as he’d watched the driver collapse, as if all the bones had vanished from his body.

Behind Simmons had stood a short but heavily-muscled man, holding a baton of some kind, having just bludgeoned Simmons over the head with it.

Will had suddenly cried out in pain, and Merlin was grabbed from behind, and lifted up by someone who _was not Will_ and-

“NO!” he’d screamed, throwing out all his magic that he could. Whoever had been holding him had gasped in pain, letting him go, but someone else had been there, holding a rag with a bittersweet smell over his face.

Merlin had guessed immediately what it was, and had tried not to breathe, but he had been suddenly hit in the back, forcing all the breath out of his lungs, and on reflex he had breathed in.

He remembered nothing from after that.

He’d woken up here, in what Merlin could only assume was the back of a moving van of some sort. It was empty, save for him, a lump of probably-clothes on the other side, and some utility lights showing the emptiness, and he was handcuffed to something on the floor, as his hands were bound behind him.

He was a hostage. A bloody hostage.

“Well, well, well, look who’s finally decided to join us.”

Merlin’s head snapped, only for him to need to shut his eyes from the dizziness, when he heard a deep voice speak from where, apparently, the front of the van was. It was hard to tell in the near-darkness, but the back of the van was apparently separated from the front by a thick partition of some kind.

It was while his eyes were closed that Merlin realized he could feel something around his neck. Metal, cold, unnaturally cold, almost painfully so.

And underneath it he was burning.

 _No…_

He’d heard about these. But – they were only used on criminals! Merlin wasn’t…he didn’t…

He opened his eyes to see a small door, barely the size of his face, slide open in the partition, and a face in a ski-mask peer in.

Merlin cringed away from the sight, and the man laughed, turning back to face forward, closing the flap, and leaving the wall between them.

Oh, god, he was a hostage. He was handcuffed in the back of a strange van with a strange man staring at him, and he had one of those magic-suppressing collars around his neck.

He tried desperately to move something with his magic, wiggle his shoelace, shift the handcuffs, something, but no matter how hard he tried to push out with his magic, it hit the collar and screamed and Merlin wanted to scream with it as it retreated inside him, and crying out as he felt a painful shock go through him, starting from the neck. It was his magic, they couldn’t do this to him!

He tried to look around with the meager lights of the van. The windows were completely blacked out, but the light was enough for Merlin to see the lump he’d dismissed as clothes was moving. Breathing! He wasn’t alone.

Slumping against the opposite wall, arms also tied behind his back, was…

“Arthur?”

Nothing, and for one horrendous moment, Merlin wondered if Arthur was dead. But he reassured himself with the sounds of Arthur breathing, and the sight. Good.

They drove for a long time and it was at least two forevers before he heard Arthur groan and shift.

The person in the front slid the flap open again, looking back. Only his eyes were revealed, and in this dim lighting, it wasn’t enough for Merlin to make out what his expression was.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” the man said, in a tone that told Merlin what the man’s expression was, anyway. “Or rather, good evening. You boys are up way past your bedtime.”

Then he laughed once more and turned away, closing the flap again.

When Merlin looked back at Arthur, the prince was looking at him.

“Emrys?” he asked, slurred and groggy. “Merlin?”

“Yeah,” Merlin said. “We’ve been kidnapped.”

“I can see that,” Arthur snapped. He was trying to be a prat, but he sounded as scared as Merlin felt.

“What are we going to do?” Merlin asked. “Where are they taking us? What if they want to kill us? What if-”

“Shut up, Merlin,” Arthur said with a sigh. “We will do…nothing.”

“WHAT?!”

“Oi!” the man up front shouted. “Quiet back there!” The menacing voice had him and Arthur both cringing away, again.

After several moments, Arthur spoke, lowly, only enough to be barely heard over the van’s engines.

“I am the Crown Prince, and you are the Prime Minister’s son. We’re on the news all the time, the entire country knows our faces! The army and the police and MI5 and MI6 and everyone, they all work for our parents! We’ll be found in no time.”

Merlin pondered it.

“Arthur,” Merlin said. “If all these people work for our parents, how were we kidnapped in the first place?”

Arthur never answered.

Instead, after several moments, he pulled his feet out from underneath himself and stretched out his legs.

Merlin did the same, and while he didn’t want to seem like a baby about it, he felt a lot better when their ankles were touching and locking together.

“Do you think they’ll send James Bond to get us?” Merlin mused.

Arthur snorted. “Yeah, and Doctor Who can help him, with Father Christmas as back-up.”

“…think Father Christmas would let me pet his reindeer?” he asked cheekily.

Arthur dramatically hung his head in exasperation.

When Arthur looked up, though, he frowned.

“What’s that around your neck?”

Merlin winced to be reminded of it.

“Magic-suppressing collar,” he said quietly.

Arthur said nothing, just sighing as he leaned back against the wall behind him.

The van drove over a bump of some kind, forcibly dragging them back to face their predicament.

Merlin wiggled his foot a little, and Arthur absentmindedly wiggled his foot back.

After that, they were still and silent. Their captors drove for hours, and Merlin started to droop, dozing off…if the guy up front wasn’t lying, then it was way past his bedtime.

~*~

The van eventually stopped, and a moment later, Merlin gasped as the back door opened, and flinched away from the sudden brightness blinding him.

“Ow!” he cried out sharply as he felt the handcuffs around his wrist being tugged off and was dragged across the rough bottom of the van and dropped onto a hard dirt ground, with sharp rocks digging into his skin.

A moment later, he heard another thud and Arthur crying out beside him. Merlin looked up to see Arthur shouting at three men, all large with muscle and height, and engraved bracelets Merlin knew to be protections against magic.

Not like it would be worth much, considering the collar.

“Who are you?” Arthur demanded a moment later, as Merlin tried to open his eyes. It wasn’t sunlight, but some sort of bright floodlight well above them, inside a large, large room. A warehouse? Or an abandoned factory, as there seemed to be machinery around. But it was only one floor, from the looks of the doors the rest of the building was an office? Or what?

“That’s not for you to know, little boy,” the bloke from earlier said, before turning to the other two men. “Get them to the holding room. I’ll call the boss.”

Then Merlin was being grabbed again, and he kicked out furiously, pushing with everything but his magic (it was _his_ magic, but the collar hurt hurt hurt hurthurthurt-) and he heard a deep growl from above him and next to him as he heard Arthur fighting too and-

There was a rag in front of his face, and Merlin had already breathed in before he realized what it was.

“Merlin!” he heard Arthur shout, and then another muffled shout, and then it was quiet.

He was conscious, this time, barely. He couldn’t move as he was lifted up into the man’s arms like a doll and thrown over his shoulder and carried, and he could only muster up the energy to open his eyes again, and when he did it was to blink blearily at dull gray surroundings as they were carried through a labyrinth of hallways.

His head cleared slowly as they were carried through the hallways, but not enough to fight.

Then suddenly, they were in a room, a much smaller room, and then he and Arthur echoed indignant cries as they were unceremoniously dropped onto what felt like a really thin mattress.

“Ow,” Merlin heard Arthur mumble, and tried to push himself up, wincing when his wobbly arms collapsed and dropped him back on the pallet.

He heard heavy footsteps walking away, a door slamming, and then shuffling from beside him, and opened his eyes to see Arthur struggling to sit-up.

“Where are we?” Merlin mumbled several minutes later, looking around from his position on the floor.

“How should I know?” Arthur snapped, standing and surveying the room. “And for god’s sake, get up!”

“I can’t,” Merlin said quietly, even trying to get up to prove his point.

“I knew you were a big girl,” Arthur sneered.

“Have you met Gwen? Or Morgana?” Merlin asked. “And – it’s not…it’s this collar.”

Arthur frowned, before reaching out and helping Merlin sit up, leaning him against the stone wall of the room they were in.

It appeared to be an old office of some kind, a filing cabinet in one corner and a desk in another, with a small TV sitting on it. There were no windows, one large vent for air, and the walls were gray stone, and otherwise there wasn’t really anything to say about the room.

“What does the collar have to do with it?” Arthur asked.

“It makes me ill,” Merlin said.

“Ill?” Arthur asked with a frown. “Huh. I would think that having your magic suppressed for you would be better.”

Merlin stared. _No…_

He had hoped, somewhere deep down, that Arthur would be better than his father – but he was just like him.

“How can having magic suppressed be good?!” Merlin cried out.

“Because then you don’t have to control it – all that pent up power trying to destroy everything, it’s contained for you…why are you staring at me like that?”

“I…I can’t believe you actually believe that,” Merlin said in horror. “I always thought…I never thought Mum meant it when she said that people said those things…” Merlin shook his head. “How can anyone believe such stupid things?”

“How, exactly, are they stupid things, Merlin?” Arthur asked. “Because magic _does_ destroy things-”

“So can you,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, shaking his head furiously to get rid of the tears. People _actually_ believed these things? “I always thought Will was lying or joking when he said the kind of lies people believed.”

“Who’s Will?” Arthur asked.

“My…my bodyguard.” Merlin bit his lip, shutting his eyes. “I used to think those lies were so stupid, that no one could possibly believe them.”

He opened his eyes to see Arthur frowning in confusion.

“How are they so preposterous? It’s perfectly logical – magic destroys a lot of things and we need to control it – with that collar, though, it does it for you, so you can relax and-”

“ _I don’t need to!_ ”

Arthur scooted back, startled, and if Merlin had the energy he would have smiled vindictively.

“What do you mean ‘you don’t need to’?” Arthur asked.

“Magic doesn’t – it doesn’t try to destroy everything. There’s nothing in the universe that tries to just destroy things for no reason,” Merlin said. How could anyone believe that such an evil force could exist? “It’s not – I don’t…I don’t need to control it because there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Arthur narrowed his eyes. “What, and you expect me to believe that?”

Merlin hardened his jaw. “How can you not believe that? It’s…look, there are a lot of bad sorcerers out there – but that’s because there are a lot of bad people out there. Most sorcerers are normal people and- I’m not evil!”

“Well I know you’re not, you’re too stupid to be, but all the other sorcerers out there-OW!”

Merlin pulled back his fist from where he’d punched Arthur, and Arthur reeled, pushing himself back as he brought up a hand to his cheek where Merlin had punched him.

“Look what I just did without magic!” Merlin snapped. “And I’m not stupid, I know you’re bigger than me – you can do a lot worse to me.”

Arthur swallowed as he brought his hand down from his face.

“I didn’t – I didn’t mean anything-”

“Yes you did,” Merlin said. “People like you say that and then think it’s okay to beat up people like me or kill people like me.”

And, now he couldn’t hold back the tears – Arthur was a prat but Merlin had hoped he’d be better than this. He just turned away and curled up into a little ball against the wall. He was a hostage, he had no idea where he was, he was wearing a magic-suppressing collar, and his only fellow hostage was a magic-hating ass who believed all the lies about sorcerers that Merlin had always felt so sure were obvious lies, _lies, lies_!

“Hey, look, don’t cry, just – I didn’t…I didn’t know, all right?”

“Well now you do,” Merlin snapped, refusing to look up.

Arthur sighed and sat by the wall next to Merlin.

For a while, they just sat there like that, Merlin trying to stop crying and Arthur fidgeting.

This was how they were when one of the men from earlier burst into the room.

~*~

Arthur nearly jumped out of his skin when the door slammed open, and he scrambled up when one of the kidnappers from earlier barged in, a large canvas bag over his shoulder and no ski mask on. He shut the door behind himself and cried out, “Rise and shine, boys!”

Arthur glared at the man. He was an average looking bloke, probably dozens looking just like him running around in Father’s office.

“The name is Thomas Collins – no need to introduce yourselves, I know who you are,” the man said cheerfully as he set the bag down on the table. “Now, up and at ‘em, boys.”

“Who are you people?” Arthur asked. “And what do you want with us?”

Tom smiled.

“Same thing that boy wants from you, I expect,” he said with a smirk, pointing outright to Merlin, who only just managed to stand up. “To be treated as a human being instead of a second-class citizen.”

“Er…” Arthur frowned, confused. This man wasn’t a human being? And how was Merlin…

“…you’re sorcerers,” Arthur said finally, carefully.

“Right in one, Your Highness,” the man said sarcastically.

Arthur slowly turned to Merlin, who was staring up at Tom Collins in horror.

“No…” he said. “You c-can’t be…why…” He swallowed, then reached up for the collar around his neck. “If you were, I w-wouldn’t be wearing this.” He touched the flat, smooth, silver ring around his neck, with nothing to signal a place where the ring might split except for the small ridge with a little black square on it, on the part of the collar at the back of Merlin’s neck.

Arthur wondered if it felt as cold as it looked. Even if it wasn’t, a ring of metal almost an inch wide around the neck could not possibly be comfortable.

The man sighed. “I really am sorry about that, Emrys – but it was necessary. You boys are going to promote our cause one way or another, and that requires you both stay here. And that means you have to be bound.” Arthur realized with an internal start that the man was genuinely sorry about this.

Merlin was crying again. “No!”

Tom Collins ignored him, turning back to reach into the canvas bag. Just as Arthur was starting to realize that maybe he should make a move on the man while he was turned away, he turned back, a camera and a newspaper in hand.

“Well, then, boys, time to make your parents _really_ worry,” he said, and yanked at a still-stunned Merlin’s arm until he and Arthur were standing right next to each other, before Tom shoved the newspaper at them.

“Hold that up,” he commanded. Arthur and Merlin both obliged, Merlin with shaking hands and Arthur with defiant fury, trying desperately to think his way out of here, but Tom Collins just smirked and crouched, held up what looked to be a professional-quality camera, and snapped one picture of them, before checking something on what was probably the screen of the camera.

“Good, boys, very good,” the man said, stowing the camera away in his bag. “Keep the paper, and these – lucky for you boys there was no tracking technology or tracing spells on them.”

Arthur looked in surprise as he was handed his Gameboy Advance he’d just got and the travel-pack with it that he’d had on him when he’d been kidnapped, and watched as the man handed a small, shabby backpack to Merlin.

“This really doesn’t have to be unpleasant, boys,” the man said in a relatively neutral tone as he shuffled around with something in his canvas bag. “Just cooperate, listen to us, don’t complain too much or do anything particularly stupid, and you’ll be fine. If your parents do the same, you’ll be home in no time.” He looked down at his watch. “You get to go to the loo at the same time as your meals, the first of which comes in an hour. Don’t cause trouble until then. Telly works, so you can entertain yourself without causing us any problems. I suggest you make use of it.”

And with that curt but creepily-polite word, he walked out of the room, shutting and locking the door behind him.

Arthur collapsed onto the large pallet, as did Merlin, and looked down at his Gameboy, before looking over to Merlin, who had just opened his bag and was looking for something inside. In several moments, he extracted a book with what looked to be a picture of a kid turning into an animal on the front.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Animorphs,” Merlin said. “It’s an American series. I had just got a bunch of books when I was…” He looked over at Arthur’s Gameboy. It was red and covered in stickers. “What were you playing?”

“…I had a lot of games with me, but I was playing Asterix & Obelix,” Arthur said finally.

Merlin nodded, before looking down at his book nervously, biting his lip, then opening up to where a bookmark was situated in the book, and he started reading.

Arthur checked the newspaper, only to find out it was from the same day they were kidnapped. So not much time had passed, then. It had been early afternoon when he was grabbed, and judging by their sleepiness it was very late at night, now, or very early morning. But right now, that didn’t tell them much.

For lack of anything better to do, Arthur found a socket to plug the charger into, connected his Gameboy to it, and opened up to continue playing.

Dinner came, some god-awful ready-meal of some kind and a bottle of water each, and they were blindfolded and walked down the hall or someplace individually to the loo, where Arthur relieved himself and brushed his teeth and hair with some cheap things the man had curtly handed him, and then they were left alone, but not before the man said, “The lights’ll go off in half an hour, if I were you I’d be in bed by then.”

And then he tossed in two pillows and two large blankets, and left them alone to their own devices.

They were lying down when it happened, but Merlin still cried out when the lights abruptly switched off, apparently remote controlled.

For several minutes, Arthur tried to go to sleep, hoping tomorrow they could go home. If Tom Collins was anything to go by, their kidnappers were of the reasonable sort. Probably would demand something their parents could give, and hopefully would just let them go once they got it.

“Arthur?”

Arthur sighed when he heard Merlin from the other side of the pallet. They’d put as much space between them as possible on the thankfully-large pallet, but that still meant Arthur could hear every moment of fidgeting and restlessness. And now Merlin wanted to talk?

“Yes?”

“…I’m scared,” Merlin admitted quietly.

Arthur rolled his eyes. “We’re hostages.”

“No, I mean…I know it’s stupid and you’re probably going to call me a big baby, but…it’s so dark in here.”

Arthur frowned. “You’re scared of the dark?”

“Not…normally. But I usually have my magic and I can make little lights and stuff until I fall asleep but right now-”

“Good, god, you are a big baby,” Arthur said.

“…I don’t care,” Merlin said in a small voice, making Arthur wince with guilt. Luckily Merlin couldn’t see him. “I’m still scared.”

“Oh, _here_ ,” Arthur said, before pushing himself up and reaching over to the bag where his Gameboy was. He pulled it out of the travel bag, along with one of the more mindless games he had, and plugged the charger in, which was still connected to the wall. Turning off the sound function, he turned it on and set it to play a demo game automatically, then set it down next to Merlin’s head on the other side of the large pallet. “There, that demo game goes on for twenty minutes if you let it. The light should stay on that whole time. Just hit replay if you need to.”

With that he flopped down on his pallet and shut his eyes, and slowly drifted off the sleep.

But not before hearing Merlin murmur in a small voice, “Thank you.”


	3. Birthday Hostages

As it turned out, the TV in the room worked, and was even tuned to cartoons when they turned it on the next morning to see what they could get.

“We should really tune into the news,” Arthur said.

“...probably,” Merlin said reluctantly. He knew what it would be about, how unpleasant it would be. “I just...don’t want to.”

Yet again, Arthur hung his head in exasperation.

“You’re an idiot,” he said again.

“And you’re still a prat,” Merlin said, and focused on the TV rather than Arthur or what was currently their situation.

It didn’t work out so well once the episode ended and they tuned in to the news.

All they could talk about were them.

“Late afternoon to early evening yesterday, Prince Arthur and Merlin Emrys were kidnapped by the Blesseds, an extremist magical-rights group,” the newscaster said. “Their security forces were disabled externally, signaling a large and well-capable group. Today, the King and the Prime Minister have been sent photographs of the two boys in captivity together, holding up yesterday’s newspaper showing the date…”

And then it showed the picture – them standing together, looking worn and confused and a little glass-eyed each, holding up the newspaper in white-knuckled hands.

“…neither one seem to be sporting any injuries so far, although Merlin Emrys is wearing a magic-suppressing collar, stifling most theories that he or his mother may have been working in conjunction with the group in some form, from all the but the most ardent of anti-magic supporters…”

“People thought I would kidnap you?!” Merlin cried out while staring at Arthur.

“You’re a sorcerer. The Blesseds are sorcerers,” Arthur said grimly. “Who wouldn’t assume that- oh, don’t cry again!”

Merlin obliged by trying to hit him instead.

~*~

They watched for hours as on the news, there were all sorts of talks about what was being done to find them.

At what was presumably sometime in the afternoon, Tom Collins came in, holding two more of those microwave trays and another bottle of water each.

“How come you haven’t made any demands of them?” Merlin asked as soon as the man came in.

He just smirked.

“We have our reasons, little Emrys.”

“What do you want?” Arthur asked.

“To be treated as a human being,” the man sneered at Arthur as he set down their lunches on the table.

“We are, though, why do you have to kidnap us?” Merlin asked. “It’s not like the old days where sorcerers were _enslaved_!” They were quite free to go where they pleased, nowadays, there were no servitude quotas to evade execution, so many of the job and office restrictions had been lifted in the last decade, and the only thing they had to give at registration was blood! There were plenty of sorcerers wandering around and living out their lives just fine, and there was even a Druidic MP – an actual sorcerer was going to follow soon enough, Merlin was sure of it. Why did these people have to do this? “Don’t you see doing this will make things worse for us?!”

“Besides,” Arthur said. “You do realize any gains you could theoretically make with this stunt will be reversed if we’re rescued or dead, right?”

The man smirked again.

“Right, kiddo, you keep telling yourself that,” he said, and left.

Merlin stared morosely at his lunch, appetite lost, as he said, “I want to go home.”

“You and me both,” Arthur muttered, took his lunch, and settled back down to watch the news.

~*~

For the next week, this was their life. In between watching whatever programmes they could find on CBBC, they watched the news, three-quarters of which was about them. Speculations of what the Blesseds wanted – no demands were made, still – where they were, and what the boys’ condition was that may be hidden by the photographs, of which there was one every day.

“Do they really think if the Blesseds kidnapped us they would haul us all the way over to Russia?” Arthur asked, as apparently there was some debate between their parents and the Russian president.

“Well, the Blesseds might send false evidence,” Merlin said.

Arthur hated the stillness and inaction, and the helplessness that grew with each passing day. He grew more fidgety and restless every day, even as Merlin grew more quiet and still. It wasn’t a difference that Arthur missed, but he felt no reason to try and point it out again, just yet.

Merlin was just too tired to notice.

Over the course of the week, Arthur managed to play through most of his games, while Merlin finished half his books. Every other day, one of their loo breaks would be extended as they were handed a bar of soap and a wash rag and told to clean themselves up quickly if they cared for it.

(Merlin always wanted to, but when it happened late at night, he was often tired, and even though the lethargy scared him, he just washed his face and hands and hoped their parents could get them out of there soon.)

They wondered why they even had a working television, but tried not to question it, instead opting to stay on top of things as best as they could.

By the end of the week, Merlin was having trouble getting up in the morning.

Arthur was having trouble sitting down.

The last day they would spend as 12-year-olds dawned, as best as they could call it that, with a video stream from various supporters around the world praying for their quick rescue.

“It’s only our birthday,” Arthur grumbled, and Merlin tried not to bristle at that as he watched some video from one of the Cambridge choirs, singing hymns in their name.

~*~

Today was their 13th birthday.

Merlin woke up to Arthur already nibbling his way through the leftover dinner from last night and drinking the last of his water as he turned on the television.

“Happy birthday,” he said when he saw Merlin was awake.

“Thanks,” Merlin mumbled, as he slowly sat up, trying to save his waning energy. “You too…is it really our birthday?”

Arthur pointed ot the muted television screen. For the moment, the news piece was about some Parlimentary scandal, but Merlin didn’t have to wait long before the caption read, Britain Boys Turn 13 Today.

Merlin sighed. “Brilliant.”

“I wonder if they care,” Arthur said, gesturing vaguely out the door.

Apparently, they did.

“Happy birthday, boys,” Collins said cheerfully, walking in with two trays of soggy microwaved pancakes, with little packets of syrup on top, and two bottles of orange juice. “Welcome to teenagerdom, and the impending worst years of your life.”

“Um, thanks?” Arthur said, staring at the pancakes, as did Merlin.

Collins set them down on the table and picked up the trays from last night. “I decided to be nice to you boys, today – those trays have an extra spell to keep them warm all day. Enjoy your dessert-for-breakfast.”

They stared at him incredulously.

He just rolled his eyes and left, perfunctory as ever.

“...well this is weird,” Arthur said, looking at the tray.

“It’s our birthday, we’re supposed to get desserts for breakfast,” Merlin said cheerfully. “Mum does this all the time, for tradition.”

“Tradition?” Arthur asked.

“Er....actually, come to think of it, the only people I know who do it are Druids...” Merlin paused, trying to think it through. It was just something they did.

“So it’s a sorcerers’ tradition?” Arthur asked.

“Um, I guess so? Never thought about it too much, just tucked in and enjoyed it. I mean, dessert for breakfast, how can you complain?”

“It’s unhealthy,” Arthur grumbled, but he was already pushing himself up.

“It’s our birthday,” Merlin repeated with some extra cheer, most of which was un-faked.

Arthur rolled his eyes and grabbed the trays and bottles, handing one of each to Merlin, who took his and plopped down in front of the telly, wondering what the people had to say about their birthday.

 _“The yet-unrescued Prince Arthur and Merlin Emrys turn 13 today, and even with the boys unfound, many in the nation are celebrating on their behalf, in hopes of improving morale and honoring the boys, despite their current captivity.”_

As the newscaster continued on, Arthur said, “Really?”, before taking a bite of his pancake. “Celebrating our birthday when we’re not even there?”

“Why not?” Merlin asked. “They need something to cheer themselves up.”

“Honoring us, my arse,” Arthur said. “Christmas is four days away. They’re just using it as an excuse to get drunk and party early.”

“Well, if they’re going to get drunk and party, it might as well be in our name,” Merlin said.

“It’s stupid and pointless,” Arthur said.

“It makes them feel better,” Merlin countered, punctuating his words with a bite of syrupy pancake. It wasn’t good even by Merlin’s standards – and he’s had plenty of microwaved or spell-heated meals in his lifetime – but it was better than what they’d been getting so far, so he tried to enjoy it.

Arthur just rolled his eyes and turned back to the screen.

Some people agreed with Arthur, it seemed, disgusted that people had the audacity to be happy while they were still in captivity. Others stressed that it was important for the Blesseds to know who was boss, while still others countered that telling the Blesseds the country was fine without the boys might make them want to kill them, to which someone else pointed out their feelings wouldn’t really impact the random Blessed, but oh, how do the King and Prime Minister feel about all this?”

Merlin drunk in the clip of Mum that came next, even though it was just her saying ‘no comment, please, no comment’ over and over again – as was the clip of the King a moment later, and Merlin wasn’t surprised to find Arthur’s eyes glued to the screen for that segment.

After a while, the news turned to various clips of Winter Solstice celebrations by Druids and sorcerers around the country, and Merlin found himself at a bit of a loss. It was his birthday, his 13th birthday. There were so many other things he should be doing right now.

“Today would have been my initiation,” Merlin mumbled.

“What’s that?” Arthur asked, turning to him. “ A sorcerer thing?”

“More of a Druid thing than a sorcerer thing, but yeah,” Merlin said. “Just a ceremony saying, ‘yay, you’re a sorcerer, now you get to start learning magic!’. Doesn’t matter for me, but it’s tradition so Mum would have made me go.”

“Why doesn’t it matter to you?” Arthur asked. “Sounds important.”

“Most kids don’t start showing magic ‘til they’re like 10 or 12 or something, but I’ve been doing it my whole life so it doesn’t really mean anything to me, anyway...still - it’s like a birthday party. I was looking forward to that.”

Arthur snorted. “Some party, a religious ceremony.”

“What were _you_ going to do today, then?”

Arhtur shrugged. “Father had a small party planned, only about fifty people or so-”

“‘Only’ fifty?!”

“-but I think he was still hoping to get me to agree to a joint birthday party with you.”

Merlin blanched. “Ugh. Why can’t everyone shut up about that?”

“Your mother hounded after you about it, as well?” Arthur asked, surprised.

“No - but only because after I refused the first two dozen times she got everyone else to nag me about it.”

Arthur laughed. “Delegation, then? Nice.”

“Not so nice for me - just annoying.”

Arthur chuckled again, before sighing a little forlornly as he looked around their little holding room. “Well, I guess they got what they wanted, now, anyway...if you could call this a birthday party..”

Merlin sighed. “Might as well...at least now I get to put off registration.”

“You haven’t done that, yet?” Arthur asked, confused. “I thought you said you did magic your whole life...?”

“Mum wanted to do what all other sorcerer’s parents do, put it off as long as possible,” Merlin said. “So since I don’t have to be registered until I’m 13...well, we would have done it yesterday, so I wouldn’t have to spend my birthday miserable, giving blood and being...” Here, Merlin smiled, cold and sardonic as he gestured up to his neck. “...in magic suppressors.”

Arthur winced. “I thought you were allowed to do official things without suppressors now?”

“Only in buildings with strong enough wall suppressors,” Merlin said. “Which most don’t have.”

“Oh.”

“Well,” Merlin said. “I doubt they’ll try and fine my mum for me not being registered, at least.”

Arthur snorted. “Even my father wouldn’t try to fine her, and he wants to bring the registration age down to nine.”

Merlin laughed. “Nine? Beats five, at least.”

“Five?”

“The MP with the bad hair? Um...damn, I don’t remember his name. I should, we had him over for dinner...”

“Aredian?”

“Yeah, him!”

“You had him over for dinner?” Arthur asked, laughing in incredulity. “Were you there?”

“Yeah,” Merlin said, smiling as he remembered that night - or rather, what happened right after. “He looked so ill having to dine with a sorcerer, he kept running to the bathroom after every course. I mean, it was embarrassing, because we could hear him pray for protection against me, and Mum was just livid, but Will was going on right behind about the kind of stick he must have up his arse to actually do the full church-prescribed ‘pray between every course’ thing.”

“Really?” Arthur asked. “My father’s the head of the Church and even he doesn’t do that.”

“Does your father even eat with sorcerers?” Merlin asked.

“...good point,” Arthur said. “Come to think of it, the banquet with you when we first met, I think that’s the first time either of us ate at the same table as a sorcerer. The closest was a banquet hall once back when Grandmother was still alive as Queen...”

Merlin shrugged, before looking back at the telly, where some baker had made cakes shaped like them, and was auctioning them off as a “royal birthday special”.

“...what did you want to do?” Merlin asked. “For your birthday? That party, what were you planning to do?”

“What I plan is never what I want,” Arthur said, rather grimly, before shaking his head and saying, “Probably the usual sort of thing. Cake and food, dancing around the gardens or trying not to dance, presents...”

Merlin frowned, confused. “Wait, if that’s what’s planned...what did you want to do, then?”

“Fly a helicopter,” Arthur said.

Merlin stared, and Arthur grinned...a lot.

A bit too big.

“What did you really want?” he asked.

“I just said-”

“We’ve been stuck with nothing but each other’s company for the last two weeks, Arthur,” Merlin said, turning his head to face Arthur fully.

“Yeah, two weeks,” Arthur snapped. “Not actually that long, no matter how much it feels like it.”

“Aaand, now you’re definitely hiding something,” Merlin said. “So come on, then - if you could do anything you wanted, today, what would you rather do?”

A pause.

“Arthur-”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, now-”

“I _mean_ it,” Arthur snapped. “I want to do _nothing_. I would like to just sleep and then wake up and just get it over with. But every year, everyone insists on making a big deal out of it!”

“No one wants to do ‘nothing’ on their birthday, Arthur.”

“They do when their birthday is also the anniversary of, and reason for, their mother’s death!” Arthur snapped, and Merlin stilled as Arthur abruptly turned away and crawled back under his blanket, curling up into a tight ball of misery that Merlin hadn’t seen from him thus far.

For all the ceremony that gets put into the memorials for Queen Ygraine every year, it was easy to forget that her death was on the same day as Arthur’s birthday, and his own.

No wonder Arthur had seemed so despondent about the prospect of their birthday.

Crawling over, Merlin put a hopefully-comforting hand on Arthur’s shoulder, who turned his shoulders and poked his head out from under his blanket to glare at Merlin.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin said. “For pushing you so much. I should have realized...come on, let’s finish these horrible pancakes and see who gets those cakes of our faces, yeah? We’re here, it’s now - let’s make the best of it.”

Arthur gave him a shrewd look, before sighing and nodding, turning completely under his blanket and slipping out his upper body, though still staying withing the refuge of the blanket as he watched the news.

The rest of the day was spent much like the previous ones, sitting in front of the telly. Hearing everyone on it talk about them got depressing faster than usual, before watching some cheesy Christmas films instead, before going back to the news after a few hours, switching off more than usual.

In the end, while PNB head Aredian tried to stir up some conflict, no one even thought of trying to press Mum with a fine for Merlin being unregistered. While some Druids held an initiation memorial for him, with the guest of honor stuck in a tiny room in god knows where, there wasn’t much they could do.

And when the news cut to the unveiling ceremony, releasing to the public the new monument built in honor of Queen Ygraine that people had been talking about for months, Merlin held onto Arthur’s hand as he watched the ceremony with wide, nearly-unblinking, and almost-crying eyes.

This year, it was just an engraving of her name and some poem she’d liked in a wall at some garden she frequented as a child, but by the end Arthur was still wiping his dry eyes repeatedly as Uther gave a speech remembering her, praying for Arthur’s quick rescue, and pleading for her to watch over Arthur from above.

“...she’s still here, you know,” Merlin murmured, after that ceremony was over and they switched over to pre-Christmas specials.

Arthur frowned as he turned to face Merlin. “Wha...what?”

“Every January,” Merlin said, before pausing at Arthur’s frown of confusion. “When my dad died? Every January, my mum always pulls out every photo album, and reads bits from the book he wrote, and journals and things, and...it can’t replace him or even come close to having him there, but...it’s nice, knowing when people die, some part of them stays with you.”

“Don’t Druids believe in reincarnation?” Arthur asked dubiously. “Or is your father a ghost?”

“First off, _I’m_ not a Druid,” Merlin said. “I’m a sorcerer. Big difference. Don’t believe what PNB tells you, ‘cause for the ‘Party of Natural Britons’ they have yet to understand the difference between us. The difference is slight, but it’s there. But it doesn’t matter, and I’m not talking about ghosts, those are rare anyway. I mean the important bits, what they cared about and their love for us, for you and me.”

“My mother died at my birth, Merlin, she didn’t know me long enough to love me.”

“My dad died three weeks after I was born,” Merlin said. “It’s not like he ‘knew me’, either. That’s one of the not-important bits.”

Arthur sighed. “I suppose it’s...reassuring.”

Merlin smiled. Arthur’s tone was drudging and resistant, but he still kept his hand in Merlin’s.

He gave that hand a tight squeeze before returning his attention to the screen.

That evening, their dinner trays came with with cupcakes, and Merlin stared in shock as Artur picked one up and handed it to him, singing:

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Merlin, happy birthday to you...”

Merlin took the fairy cake gingerly, trying not to tear up at the unexpected kindness. But right now, this little kindness was all he head and-

“You’re not going to cry, are you?”

“No, I just...” he paused. “I - it’s my birthday, and...we both don’t want to be here...and I just want to go home. Home with Mum and Will and - thank you.”

Arthur looked at him oddly for a moment, before slowly nodding. “We might as well make the most of the situation,” he said pragmatically.

“Still, thank you - really.”

“Yeah, well...no need to get too worked up about it.”

So of course, when Merlin sang, it was “Happy birthday to you, you live in a zoo, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one-aaah!”

Arthur launched himself at Merlin, wrapping him in a playful but indignant chokehold before Merlin escaped, and as they wrestled over Merlin’s singing ability and Arthur’s birthday honor, Merlin couldn’t help but think that for all the fact they were still hostages, maybe this birthday wasn’t so bad, after all.


	4. Bonding

Christmas time was not nearly as happy as their birthday.

“I can’t believe he nearly cancelled his speech,” Arthur said as they watched Eastenders before the speech. Arthur was sitting upright on his pallet, which had long since been dragged closer to the telly, and Merlin was lying on his stomach, leaning on his elbows, as he bit into the ready-meal pudding they’d got from Collins that morning, trying not to flop forward and go back to sleep.

“They’re doing part of the speech live,” Arthur said. “So Father can talk about the kidnapping. Weird.”

Merlin swallowed his current bite and said, “I’m pretty sure it would be weirder for the Christmas speech to not mention us, Arthur.”

Arthur nodded absently as the tune of God Save the King came on, and once the song was done, the screen was filled with the image of the King, regal as ever, but showing obvious signs of how much his son’s absence has affected him.

“He’s a wreck,” Arthur said in shock as he drank in the sight of his father.

“He’s distraught.”

“He’s the King!”

Merlin just shook his head, wondering how a kid could actually end up wanting their parent to pretend they were unaffected by their kidnapping.

Arthur’s father’s voiced filled their small room soon enough, and Merlin turned to the telly to see the King’s Christmas speech, somber and tired in word and body.

“…I had nearly not given this speech, this year,” Uther said to the nation, and the world. “My son, and the son of Prime Minister Hunith Emrys, were kidnapped over two weeks ago, and to this hour remain in captivity. I can only hope that Christmas and Yule spirit will soften the hearts of their captors, and that we will see the boys returned to us unharmed.”

“We hope so, too,” Arthur muttered. “Too bad they’re so stubborn.”

But for all the sarcasm, his wide eyes were fixed on the face of his father on screen.

“Maybe Christmas spirit _will_ warm their hearts?” Merlin offered carefully, only half mocking, if that.

Arthur snorted, before frowning. “It won’t matter, they’re sorcerers, they celebrate Yule, not Christmas.”

“We celebrate Christmas!” Merlin protested.

“Well you live with your Christian mother and she’s not a sorceress-”

“Sorcerers celebrate Christmas,” Merlin said, firmly. “We get two holidays right next to each other, Solstice and Christmas.” He paused. “Well, I get three, sort of, ‘cause half the time my birthday’s on Solstice like it was this year, but the other half it’s not.”

“Three? Lucky. Half the time, people just try to cram my birthday celebrations in with Christmas, or only attend one function and pretend they attended both, or…” He grimaced. “I get a bunch of presents all at once and then have to make do with that for the whole year, and then people try to only give me presents for one day instead of two!”

“At least you _get_ presents,” Merlin said, before yawning. “I remember when me and Mum couldn’t really afford much. We usually had to choose between presents, and nice decorations and food. We went with the food. We usually just had one party for two or three celebrations because we couldn’t afford two or three parties.”

“How does that even work, getting no presents?” Arthur asked, jerking his chin to the side but not taking his eyes off his father’s face.

Merlin turned his head back to look at Arthur and said, “Easy – we have a good time. Good company is the best present in the world.”

“You get your mum’s company all the time,” Arthur said.

“…not lately,” Merlin said. He turned back to the screen, trying not to fall forward onto his chest. “Wouldn’t you love to be with your dad right now?”

Merlin saw Arthur nod in the edge of his vision.

“Still,” Arthur said. “Whatever the Blesseds celebrate, I doubt they’ll just let us go after spending all this time and trouble to kidnap us in the first place.”

Merlin deflated. He knew that, but…

“Well, then, maybe Father Christmas will take us back home in his sleigh,” he said instead, finally giving into the exhaustion and flopping forward anyway, folding his arms under his head instead, curling up a bit so his elbow was near Arthur’s knee, adjusting his head to be as not-uncomfortable as possible with the stupid collar getting in the way of that.

“At least you’d get to pet his reindeer,” Arthur said, and it took Merlin a moment but once he realized what Arthur was talking about, he grinned.

“That would be nice.”

“So would getting out of here.”

“Then let’s hope he comes.”

Once the King was done with his live speech, they half-listened to the pre-recorded parts, Arthur commenting on various points from having watched while it was filmed. Merlin leaned against Arthur, resting his head on Arthur’s leg and pretending he didn’t hear the way Arthur’s breath hitched from hearing his father’s voice and words.

He dozed off to the sound of the King’s voice talking about economy and politics and other grown-up things, and Arthur’s hand resting in his hair.

~*~

It was something they’d noticed early on, but had tried to ignore, trying to take care of themselves in the loo when they went. But they only went twice a day, and they didn’t always have time, and, well-

That sex-ed video in Year 4 lied when they said this wouldn’t be a detriment to their daily lives.

Arthur quickly noticed when Merlin pulled away to the other side of the mat, but dropped his curiosity when Merlin didn’t respond to his inquiries as to why.

When Merlin was sure Arthur was asleep, he quietly reached into his jeans, undoing them and pulling out his dick, stuffing one fisted-hand into his mouth while wrapping the other one around his hard-on, before quickly stroking, trying to bring himself off as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, it turned out Arthur wasn’t sleeping, and when he murmured a confused, “Merlin?” into the unusually large space between them, Merlin shouted in surprise before burrowing deeper into his blanket. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Merlin said. “Just…go back to sleep.”

“No,” Arthur said, pushing himself back up to peer at Merlin through the darkness. “What are you up to?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Merlin snapped, huddling in on himself even more and hoping Arthur would just let go of it so he could finish himself off and go back to sleep. Stupid penis, picking now of all times to embarrass him. Stupid, stupid body and stupid puberty and-

“Then what are you hiding? I thought your magic was suppressed.”

Then, to Merlin’s utter horror, Arthur began to tug at the blanket, and with a preemptively embarrassed squeak, Merlin clutched onto his cover by his groin. “Stop that!”

“What are you…” There was a long pause, as Merlin shut his eyes in humiliation while Arthur worked it out. “Are you wanking?!”

“…we only get to go to the loo twice a day!” Merlin snapped, thankful the darkness concealed his furious blushing.

Arthur burst out laughing. Prick.

Now humiliated, Merlin tried to figure out how to best end his torment that didn’t involve swallowing a block of iron or some other form of suicide, before he remembered something Will had said to him a long time ago, back when bullies were still a big problem: _they can humiliate you, but only you can be humiliated._

Gritting his teeth, Merlin also sat up, glaring at Arthur and not bothering to hide the tented sheet.

(Though he kind of wished he did because while Arthur abruptly stopped laughing, the way he was staring at Merlin’s crotch was really disconcerting).

Ignoring that, Merlin said, “Don’t pretend you haven’t been…” What was a good word for this, the one Will used? “…frustrated.”

Arthur didn’t respond, still staring.

“Arthur?”

Arthur shook his head a little before looking up at him and saying, “I’m not a sorcerer. Father said sorcerers were all rampant adulterers, but this-”

“Your father’s wrong,” Merlin said. “Just because some people join with others in rituals doesn’t mean they’re unfaithful. And that has nothing to do with this.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It just…this means I’m more mature than you! This happens more when we get older-”

“We were born on the same day,” Arthur said, firm but deadpan. “Which you should really remember considering our birthday was just a few days ago. And anyway I was born several hours before you!”

“So? Everyone matures different and clearly this means I’m growing up faster than you are!” Merlin said triumphantly.

Arthur snorted. “Yes, being frustrated and unable to keep it in your pants – really something to look forward to as a part of growing up.”

There was more silence, then just as Merlin was starting to think of a good retort, he noticed something: the sheets around Arthur’s crotch were not as flat now as they were just a few moments ago.

Pointing, he laughed and crowed, “Looks like I’m not the only one!”

Arthur’s eyes widened as he looked down, before he promptly pulled up his blanket around him. Merlin wondered if Arthur was blushing as much as he’d done moments ago, but he couldn’t tell in the meager light of the Gameboy.

“I – it’s – you…it’s all your fault!” Arthur spluttered.

“How is it my fault?”

“It just is!”Arthur snapped.

“No it isn’t! I was just trying to take care of myself quietly before you started nosing around-”

“Nosing around?! You’re right next to me! No matter how quiet you thought you were being, you weren’t!”

There was silence again, before Merlin heard Arthur take a deep breath and say, “Look, how about we both just…we just take care of ourselves and agree to completely ignore each other and never speak of this again?”

Merlin nodded. “Yeah, that…that works.”

They both lay back down, turning away from each other and huddling on their respective sides of the mat.

Merlin tried not to hear Arthur right there as he finished himself off, but as he came all over his hand, he got a queasy feeling in his gut that he had failed miserably at it.

~*~

Boxing Day dawned with Merlin getting up only to fall right back over when he got dizzy.

“Are you all right?” Arthur asked when he saw Merlin sprawled on his arse, only held up by leaning back on his arms.

Merlin shut his eyes and took several deep breaths. “Um…yeah…I think so.”

“What happened?”

Merlin opened his eyes, and found the room to be not swimming around him as much as it was before.

“Stood up too fast, I guess?”

At Arthur’s dubious look, Merlin added, “The collar…I’m getting worse.”

Arthur frowned, before crawling over to Merlin’s side. “Need me to help you up?”

Merlin shook his head. “I’ll just…wait it out…”

At that point, Collins came in.

“What’s got into you?” he asked, amused, when Arthur glared up at him while he was setting down the new food trays.

Arthur didn’t answer, instead shocking Merlin (and from the looks of his face, Collins) by wrapping a protective arm around Merlin while continuing to glare up at the man.

As soon as he left, Merlin turned to Arthur and asked, “What was that about?”

“You’re ill,” Arthur said, as if that explained everything.

“Not yet,” Merlin said, pushing himself up so at least he wasn’t leaning on his arms. But when he tried to get up again, he fell right back down.

“Don’t,” Merlin said sharply when Arthur tried to help him up.

“At least sit against the wall,” Arthur said, winding his hands through Merlin’s resistant arms to push him back against the wall. “So you can eat.”

Merlin hated how much relief he found by leaning against the wall, especially once Arthur brought them their meager breakfast.

“I was fine last night,” Merlin said.

“You’ve been exhausted for ages, even though we do absolutely nothing,” Arthur said, sitting next to Merlin and balancing his tray on his knees. “So…you have to be ill, because nothing we do could possibly make us tired.”

“We don’t get much food,” Merlin offered, looking down at his forlornly. “Not that I feel like eating much, anyway…”

“I know, it’s awful,” Arthur said, biting into what looked like a sausage.

“No, that’s not it, I used to eat meals like this all the time,” Merlin said, and before Arthur could stare in horror, he added, “I just…don’t feel like eating.”

Arthur remembered the last time he was ill and nodded. “I think you’re supposed to eat it anyway.”

“I don’t want to throw up, though,” Merlin said, but sighed and started eating reluctantly.

“You’ll get even more ill if you don’t,” Arthur said.

Merlin nodded and in silence they finished eating.

He tried not to think about how relieved he was to be done with the meal, but he must’ve been obvious when Arthur offered to finish up or at least hold onto the last bits. But Arthur’d had a point, at least, about needing to eat, and this time when he stood up, he didn’t get dizzy, managing to walk in a bit of a circle before he sat down again out of tiredness, then Arthur got up and started pacing back and forth across the small room.

Merlin curled up on his pallet, watching wearily as Arthur flipped through channels on the telly to find something to watch. The news was largely about more failed rescue attempts and dissecting the King’s speech, and some American political scandal that had something to do with the economy and made no real sense to Merlin at all.

Arthur settled on something neither of them really cared for but watched anyway, and Arthur sat by Merlin’s head and said, “Need anything?”

“No,” Merlin said.

Later, though, he did.

He blushed furiously as Arthur hovered over him when he got up – _on his own_ – to let Collins take him to the loo, and once he was blindfolded, he nearly fell over again when he tried to walk.

Collins got sick of him walking carefully with the wall for support, and ended up manhandling Merlin to the bathroom.

Merlin managed to not fall to the ground again when the blindfold was tugged off and he was shoved into the small space, so at least there was that. Swallowing down his frustration, though, he managed to take care of his bodily function and washed his hands and face, and was led back to their little room, where he sat against the wall as Arthur took his turn.

When they were left alone again, Merlin said, “I think I’m getting better. I could walk back. Mostly.”

“Right,” Arthur said. Merlin wondered if his lie was that obvious.

~*~

The low point of their week came when they were taken to the loo together, for once, told to strip, and handed a large bucket of water, some rags, and some soap.

“Wash yourselves,” Collins ordered gruffly. “Take your damn time, too. Can’t have you looking too bad for the camera, can we?” The man snorted as he bundled up their clothes, ignoring their furious blushing as both boys tried to hide themselves from each other, Collins, and in this situation even themselves, just a little. “Higher ups won’t have _that_ …” he grumbled, before leaving, taking their clothes with him.

Arthur grimaced, holding his flannel over his crotch as he stuck a hand in the water. Warm, at least, so there was that much.

Not that it really helped.

What followed was an excruciatingly awkward wash as they faced away from each other on either side of the bucket, reaching back behind themselves to dunk their washrags into the lukewarm water and take some soap, trying not to slip and slide across the floor as water and soap drained down their bodies and collected on the tile floor.

Then Arthur heard a loud thud and glancing over his shoulder, he saw Merlin had fallen.

“Are you-”

“M’fine, just slipped,” Merlin said.

Arthur frowned, though, when he heard some squeaking noises on the tile and several more thuds. Then silence, broken only by a soft, mostly-suppressed sob.

“Merlin?”

“…I can’t get up,” Merlin said, frustration and humiliation coloring his voice.

“Um…” Arthur bit his lip, then using his rag to cover his own bits, turned around to see Merlin on the floor, facing away from him and the bucket. With a deep flush on his face, Merlin curled up, pulling his knees to his chest and using his legs to cover himself up.

“Can you stand? Or do you think you’ll fall again?” Arthur asked, using his nicest voice possible.

  
“…fall…”

“Right,” Arthur said, looking anywhere but at Merlin’s tomato-red face. “So, I’ll…” Arthur gulped, and started again. “I’ll help you wash, okay?”

“Okay,” Merlin mumbled, his eyes shut, face still red. Arthur could sympathize, and tried to make the experience as un-humiliating as possible.

In the end, though, it wasn’t as humiliating as Arthur had expected it to be. He even dropped his own rag after helping Merlin sit up, as he fell into the gentle rhythm of dipping it into the water rubbing some soap on Merlin’s body, and wiping it down.

He went slow, careful, lavishing his time over Merlin’s body, pale and slim as it was. Bony. He helped Merlin sit up, and washed his back, pouring water down his spine and spreading it across his back. Once that was done, he got Merlin to lean against a wall and focused on the rest of him.

Merlin jerked and wimpered when Arthur touched his neck, and Arthur sighed, saying, “It’s getting dirty under there…” And Merlin relented to Arthur cleaning under his collar. Arthur’s hands nearly shook with the rush of emotion that came with Merlin’s almost pained face, emotions that made him want to grab that bucket and run out and bash Collins’ and the Blesseds’ heads in, screaming at them and demanding to know how they could do this to one of their own.

But he couldn’t do that. So he cleaned under there instead, then swiped over Merlin’s shoulders and across his chest. Merlin shook when Arthur brushed over his belly, and he fretted before realizing Merlin was just ticklish there, and the spasm was as close to laughter as he could get. He was more careful after that, gentle, and Merlin sighed as he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

Arthur unfurled Merlin’s limbs individually, washing each one with care as he soaked in the sight of it, took in the way Merlin relaxed under Arthur’s care and the warm water. Merlin wouldn’t let Arthur wash his bits, but Arthur did take care of his thighs and legs and feet and hips and everything else.

Merlin was even dozing off by the time Arthur finished, at which point Arthur finished washing up himself, then just sat there, keeping vigil over Merlin and waiting until Collins came and gave them back their clothes. When the man returned, Arthur dressed and helped Merlin dress, before they were taken back to ‘their’ room. They were so tired, Tom didn’t even bother blindfolding them.

(Arthur didn’t forget their path, though)

Once back in the room, Merlin said sincerely, “Thank you,” and Arthur accepted it.

Then they promised never to speak of it again.

~*~

Merlin seemed to feel a bit better, the next day.

But that didn’t really help much as the news unfurled across the telly screen. Arthur winced and stared in shock at his parents pleas being broadcasted, pleas for contact, even a demand they could try to meet.

“I can’t believe people are airing this,” Arthur said, watching those videos his father and Merlin’s mother be dissected. The messages were brief, spoken from behind their desks. Even his father’s voice seemed off and his hands trembling, Merlin’s mother’s skin pale, exhaustion and fear radiating even across digitalization and wires and airwaves. Short messages, asking what the Blesseds wanted, what it would take to get their sons back.

But for such a thing to wake up to on New Year’s Day…

Collins laughed when he came in and saw that.

“Loving watching your parents act like this?” He turned to Arthur. “Bet your father never shows emotion like this.”

 _Wrong!_ Arthur wanted to scream at the man. He turned away bitterly, instead, grumbling, “I wish you’d just not given us the telly so we wouldn’t have to watch this.”

Merlin narrowed his eyes at the man. “Why did you give us a working telly, anyway?”

“To keep you distracted and make sure you shut up,” Collins said. He set their meal trays on the table and said impatiently, “Like I said, just because this can be unpleasant doesn’t mean it has to be. I’m pretty sure I told you this when you arrived. We hijack the signal and watch the telly in our own office, too, if it’s any consolation.”

As he turned away and left, Arthur couldn’t help but say, “He really needs to look up the definition of the word ‘consolation’ in the dictionary.”

Merlin chuckled, his body into it, in the way Arthur was sure would have been laughter if Merlin felt any stronger.

~*~

Merlin bit down a grunt as he fisted himself under the blanket, wondering if maybe he should put off until tomorrow, when he would have a little more energy.

With a frustrated grunt, he let go of his prick and brought his hand up to his neck, running his finger over the collar, the stupid scrap of metal keeping himself locked away inside, his power and energy and everything.

“I hate you,” Merlin murmured to the collar.

“What did I do?!” Arthur protested form the other side of their pallet.

“Not you, this collar!” Merlin said, furiously stuffing his dick back into his jeans.

“Now what?”

“’Now what’ is that I’m actually too tired to wank…” He laughed. “Too tired to wank!” he added hysterically. He turned around to face a surprised and wary Arthur. “That shouldn’t be effing possible but it is and I’d know because I am actually just – this collar is taking everything away!”

“…not your life,” Arthur offered, hesitatingly.

“Not yet.”

“Well it probably won’t…?”

“I wish it would,” Merlin said. “Just to be done with this.”

“Don’t say that!” Arthur suddenly cried out sharply, turning around and clutching onto Merlin’s shoulder. “Don’t – don’t wish for death.”

“I’m not wishing for death, I just don’t want to wear this damn collar anymore!” Merlin cried out, jerking his shoulder away from Arthur’s touch. “And if I’m dead-”

“ _Don’t say that!_ ” Arthur said.

“You’re not the one wearing this collar!” Merlin cried out. “You’re not getting your soul trapped by a scrap of metal and-”

“It suppresses magic, not souls, I think you’ll live,” Arthur said.

“It might as well be my soul for all the good that difference does me,” Merlin said bitterly, turning away and trying not to groan. He barely had the energy to turn around but he was still slightly hard. Damnit.

“Merlin…”

Merlin sighed again. “I just – this collar is taking everything already, but – if I can’t even wank myself off, then ho – how soon til I can’t do anything else, either, like breathe, or, or-”

His throat tightened up too much for him to talk anymore, and even though he knew it was from suppressed tears, it felt like the hellish collar had come alive and was choking him and he couldn’t breathe or wank or anything and he just, he just-

“What if I did it for you?” he heard Arthur say.

Merlin shut his eyes and swallowed a few times, before managing to force out, “Do what?”

“Wank you off – or finish you off?”

Merlin heard rustling cloth and then felt the sudden warmth of Arthur’s s hand on his shoulder.

“I mean…I can,” Arthur offered.

…he was so tired…

“Merlin?”

…and it wasn’t like he’d get better tomorrow…

“…Yeah,” Merlin said, wishing he had enough of his magic to get the ground to swallow him up at the thought of Arthur seeing his bare dick, at the thought of having someone else touch him, finish him off-

He jumped as he felt the warmth of Arthur’s chest at his back, then Arthur’s arms around his waist, blanket shifting around Merlin’s shoulders as Arthur’s hands moved to feel around his legs, and he nearly jerked right out of his skin when he felt Arthur’s fingers wrap around him, before going completely still, almost unnaturally.

“Okay?” Arthur asked.

“Yeah,” Merlin mumbled.

“Tell me if it isn’t,” Arthur said carefully, before he started moving his hands.

At first, all Merlin could think was _this is weird, this I weird, this is weird, this is-_

No one else had ever touched him there.

But there was that sheer good feeling, warmth in his veins adding to the heat from Arthur’s hands and body wrapped around him, that almost dizzy-but-not-quite feeling in the back of his head that came with wanking, the feeling of his bones and muscles trying to liquefy, his eyes rolling to the back of his head from the sensation…

And when he came, it came with the feeling of utter relief, as if every bad feeling he’d been battling since he was kidnapped flowed out of him along with the semen that now covered Arthur’s hand-

-and that brought him back to the fact that someone else, that _Arthur_ , had just wanked him off.

He lay there, slumped in Arthur’s arms as Arthur found the shred of napkin Merlin saved for this and wiped off his hand.

But when he was clean and had extracted his arms from around Merlin, he didn’t move away, and Merlin was too wrung out to do much but lean into Arthur and doze off, deeper and deeper into the realm of dreams.


	5. Reactions

The next time it was Merlin’s turn to go to the loo, he nearly fell over again, dizzy, while pissing, and had to put one hand against the wall as he glared at his tired limbs, and wished yet again he could get rid of this collar. He hated this thing, and not just for cutting off his magic. At this point he wasn’t even sure what made him hate it more, the fact that it cut off his magic or how ill it made him.

“Be quick,” Collins had said before shoving him in, so as soon as Merlin felt steady and had finished pissing he zipped up, flushed, and went over to the sink, washing his hands and trying to adjust the collar. On top of everything else, it was uncomfortable as hell. He sighed as he looked at himself in the dingy mirror, his extra-pale and sweaty self, with the silvery collar glinting out from beneath the shadow of his chin and neck. He looked - and felt - like an animal with this thing on. They might as well put a bloody lead on him.

“Hurry up!” Collins snapped, poking his head in.

Merlin hated when he did that. What if he caught Merlin with his trousers down?

That possibility just amplified how much he hated the collar and why.

Indignant, Merlin asked, “Why should I? This is the only time I get to spend outside of that stupid room!”

It was stupid, trying to piss off people who were holding you hostage, but between the collar and the cell, Merlin was starting to think he should just try and provoke something to change, himself.

Collins just seemed amused as he said, “Well enjoy it while it lasts, then, but don’t make it last too long. I’ve got things to be doing.”

“Want me to wank myself and make it even longer?” Merlin challenged, hating how he felt his face heat up even as he said it.

Inexplicably, Collins burst out laughing. “Why bother, when the prince will do it for you?”

What...how did he...no.

Merlin paled, his limbs going cold as he realized, this man knew.

“How...h-h-how do you -”

“What, you think we would just leave you there unsupervised?” Collins asked. “There are cameras in there watching you 24/7. It’s only a pity there’s no audio.” He smirked. “I’m curious to know what you said to him to get him to even touch you, let alone finish you off. Especially since you didn’t return the favor.”

Unbidden, Merlin thought of every fight, every wank, every hug, everything which had been between just him and Arthur, and felt nauseous as he realized _they had been watched_.

Collins just laughed at the look on his face. “Seriously, how did you get the Prince of Wales to demote himself to wanking someone off? Especially a witchboy, and especially without you returning the favor?” Collins shook his head, and Merlin tried not to feel ill at Collins finding so much hilarity from this. “I wonder what else you could get him to do.”

And now Merlin just wanted to puke.

“Go to hell,” he snapped, swallowing, feeling his Adam’s apple pressed against the hard and unforgiving metal of the collar, worsening his tightening throat as he stared up at the man.

Collins just laughed again, eventually coming inside of the bathroom, apparently amused when Merlin backed away from him.

“What did you enjoy more?” Collins asked. “That it was someone else’s hands on your prick, or that the someone else was Prince Arthur?”

Merlin pressed his back against the wall, trying not to cry. “P-please, stop, just - I’ll be quick, I just need to wash my hands, just-”

“Aww, look,” Collins said, smirking. “Already got used to royal treatment. I feel sorry for your mum - Labour party, too. Not just a sorcerer son, but a gay sorcerer son? Oh, this should be interesting. Serves her right for backing out on everything she promised to those with magic in the election.”

“Don’t say that,” Merlin said hoarsely, suffocating between the collar around his neck and the nearing Collins. “I don’t - I’m not gay-”

“Of course you’re not,” Collins said, as if humoring him.

“And my mum’s Prime Minister, not a dictator - she can’t just make things happen to her whims!”

“Is that what she tells you when she puts you to bed at night?” Collins asked, voice both gentler and colder than it had been a moment before.

“It’s the truth,” Merlin snapped defensively. “The entire point of Parliament and a good deal of the rest of our government is to prevent dictatorship, and that means that one person can’t change things. Not even the King.” There - years of learning politics from listening to Will and watching his mum in a few sentences.

Collins smirked. “If you say so. Still, I would love to see how she plans to get reelected, with a witchboy queer for a son.”

Merlin felt his face heat up and his stomach curl into a little ball of acid, burning right through him. “ _Stop it_.”

The man smirked, but this time he turned and walked away, apparently bored with Merlin now.

Merlin waited until the door was closed before breathing deep and over and over and over again, trying not to break completely down into tears.

Who knows, maybe he was being watched.

 _I would love to see how she plans to get reelected with a witchboy queer for a son._

He wasn’t. Collins was stupid and a prick and Merlin knew, he knew, he shouldn’t listen to that man.

That didn’t stop from his hands from trembling the entire time he washed them, or from shaking the entire walk back as he was blindfolded and led to their room.

He was enough of a wreck that the moment the door closed behind them, Arthur stood in front of Merlin and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“We’re being watched,” Merlin blurted.

“Huh?” Arthur asked, frowning in confusion.

“There are cameras in here,” Merlin said. We’re being watched 24/7. They can’t hear us, but they can see us.”

Startled, Arthur looked around himself, and Merlin nodded blindly as he stumbled over to the mat, dizziness and fear and revulsion mixing in a terrifying cocktail in his stomach before seeping into his veins as he collapsed onto the floor-like surface.

“...shit,” Arthur said, before sitting beside him.

Merlin shut his eyes and curled up on his side of the mat. “I want to go home,” Merlin said longingly, finally letting a single tear drip down the side of his face and into his sleeve.

For once, Arthur didn’t say anything. Instead, he just put a hand on Merlin’s shoulder and squeezed in empathy.

Merlin wasn’t sure if he wished he didn’t find it as comforting as he did, or if he wished he could draw even more comfort from the gesture than he was getting right now.

Either way, he reached up and curled his fingers around Arthur’s while reminding himself that Arthur wanted to go home, too.

~*~

“We need a bigger room,” Arthur said the next day, after Merlin complained for the tenth time that Arthur’s pacing was making him dizzy.

Merlin snorted in deadened amusement. “Yeah, like they’ll give us one.”

“Well…this is some kind of factory or something…probably some more offices or whatever, and a bigger one to go with it.”

“They probably took the biggest one,” Merlin said tiredly.

“Would it be weird to ask?”

“Yes,” Merlin said. “We’re hostages, remember?”

Arthur stopped to stare at Merlin – or rather, his collar – and said, “Yeah, I know…but still…they’ve been…well, okay, they’re not really treating us well – or at least you – but they’ve not been too bad about it so far, right?” Merlin slowly nodded. “They want us to be healthy, if only because healthy hostages work in their favor. We need a bigger room.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “Alright, if you say so.” He lay back down to watch the latest repeat marathon on the telly, and Arthur sat down but fidgeted, trying to think of how to help Merlin. Maybe a bigger room would be less stuffy at least, than this one, and while he doubted they’d have access to fresh air, maybe less old air would be good for him.

He hoped. As much as Merlin seemed ill, he’d understood enough of Merlin’s vague explanation to know it was all from the collar. This wasn’t some virus that could be waited out or an infection that could be fought with awful medicines. The only way Merlin could be cured was to get that collar off.

But that wasn’t going to happen, so he would do whatever else possible to help Merlin.

He’d ask…no, demand a bigger room. If they wanted quiet, calm hostages, fine – Arthur could cause enough ruckus for both of them, to get what they needed to be quiet, calm, and healthy hostages.

Merlin nearly fell asleep before dinner while they were watching Due South. It was only Arthur’s repeated shaking of his shoulders that kept Merlin awake. But awake he was, enough to roll his eyes as Arthur got up and started pacing around in tight circles.

Again.

The episode had just finished, when Collins walked in, TV dinner in hand.

“We need a bigger room,” Arthur demanded immediately.

The man raised an eyebrow as he set the trays down on the table, next to Arthur’s empty and Merlin’s mostly-empty breakfast trays from earlier that day.

“You’re a kidnapping hostage, and you’re asking me for an upgrade?” he asked with a dark laugh. “Well, that’s rather rich of you.”

“I mean it!” Arthur shouted. “It’s so tiny, and I’m not asking for you to let us go…I just – we need to stretch our legs!”

“What, with caviar and goose-down pillows, too?” Tom asked with an oddly jovial sneer, lifting up one of the two trays. His sneer vanished as he shoved the tray at Arthur and said, “You’re hostages, sire, get it through your head! Hostage!” With one harsh swat at Arthur’s head, he turned away, unaware of Arthur’s rage.

 _I’ll make him see it,_ was all Arthur was thinking as he ripped off that plastic cover form the tray and threw it at Collins back.

The man froze in shock, and for one moment, everything froze with him.

Then Tom whirled around, and Arthur screamed as he felt Tom grab his hair and yank him back, slamming him against the wall.

Merlin shouted as the stars cleared from Arthur’s vision, just in time to see Merlin try to pull the much bigger man away. Without even looking away from Arthur, Collins used his other hand to hold back Merlin, holding him by the collar.

“Please don’t hurt us,” Arthur pleaded, eyes flicking between Merlin and Collins and back again. “Please!”

Collins smirked.

“Not so high and mighty now, are you?” he asked, jerking his head so Arthur’s head was pulled forward, then slammed into the wall again, causing Merlin to shout his protests and Arthur to cry out from the pain. “You’re a hostage, little boy. Do you understand?”

“Y-yes,” Arthur gasped, reeling from the pain and still looking desperately towards Merlin.

Collins gave one last squeeze of Arthur’s hair and let him and Merlin go.

With the human barrier gone, Merlin rushed forward to Arthur, trying to see to him even as he put himself between Arthur and Collins protectively, but Arthur kept his eyes on Collins, himself.

They both watched warily as Collins cast the first magic they’d ever seen him actually doing, waving his hands around himself and incanting a multitude of spells which Arthur was fairly certain even the least skilled of sorcerers didn’t usually rely on, until the plastic and food were both gone.

“Well, I’m not getting you another one, so you’ll have to make do without for a night,” Collins said, before turning and leaving, both boys staring after him until the door was locked behind him.

“Come on,” Merlin said quietly, tugging him over to the pallet and sitting them both down. Merlin walked over to the table and took the plastic fork and his own tray and plopped back down next to Arthur, and started dividing everything into half, taking all the smaller halves for himself. “I’m not hungry, anyway,” Merlin said when Arthur protested, and as much as he hated it he’d noticed how much Merlin wasn’t eating and he was hungry, so he didn’t fight much after that.

They ate in silence, and watched a little telly – for once they weren’t in the news, instead it was some attack in the Middle East near an important embassy of some sort – and then they shut it off and lay down, Arthur waiting until he was sure, sure, sure Merlin was asleep, before finally letting the fear seep in.

He lay there trembling, blood rushing and scalp still aching as he remembered feeling like they were both going to die.

He probably should have been surprised when he felt Merlin roll over to face him, but instead, when Merlin sheepishly smiled in the half-light of the GameBoy and opened his arms, his own desperation showing on his face, Arthur pulled them close to each other, and this time he cried and cried and cried, and Merlin shook and they held each other together as they fell asleep, still clutching tightly onto each other.

Perhaps it was because this of this that Arthur woke up the next morning to Merlin’s feverish shaking, and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong.

~*~

“Merlin?” Arthur asked the next morning, frowning as soon as Tom left after taking the latest picture. Merlin was leaning heavily against him, and the moment Arthur stepped back to take a good look at him, Merlin fell down onto the pallet all together. “Merlin!”

Merlin looked up at him, sweaty and sick. “I don’t feel good.”

Arthur fell to his knees beside Merlin. “I can tell. C’mon, lie down…”

He wasn’t really sure what to do, trying to think of what his nannies usually did when he got ill. He laid Merlin down, tucked Merlin in, and gave him some of his water, but that didn’t seem to help much.

“Merlin, what’s going on with you?” he asked, feeling Merlin’s forehead again. It didn’t tell him anything new, just that Merlin was much, much warmer than he should be, but his nannies did that a lot so maybe it helped somehow.

“…no magic,” Merlin mumbled, leaning into Arthur’s hand. Arthur kept his hand there. “Too long.”

“But it’s not even been that long!” Arthur said, confused. They were kidnapped a week before their birthday, and it was now…3rd January. So… “Three weeks and two days. Don’t some people go for months with this thing on?”

Merlin nodded, then shut his eyes and curled up on the pallet. “Gimme my blanket? I’m cold.”

“You’re sweating,” Arthur said, deciding to ignore that Merlin wasn’t explaining why he was so ill so fast. But he could guess.

It was no secret that Merlin had a lot of magic.

“I’m cold,” Merlin said insistently, and Arthur sighed and nodded, draping the blanket over Merlin and letting him tuck himself in.

“Here,” Arthur said, holding out his water again. “You’re supposed to drink lots of fluids and such when you’re sick.”

Merlin relented, sipping at some before laying his head down on the thin pillow again. Arthur bit his lip as he looked around, before finally giving up and pounding on the door. “Hey! I know you can see me! We need help!”

“They won’t come here,” Merlin said. “They know why I’m ill. My mum said this happened a lot in prisons. Will, too. Magic goes away, im-mun…immunity does too. Germs and stuff get into my body easier and it can’t fight back as well, even just the regular germs and things in a room, let alone a virus.” He shut his eyes as Arthur whirled around to face him. “They’d have to take off the collar. And they won’t.”

“Well they can’t let you just die, that would defeat the whole point of having a hostage!” Arthur snapped.

Merlin shrugged, and Arthur yelled, “You might die from this and you don’t even care?!”

“Too tired,” Merlin answered.

This time when he shut his eyes, he didn’t open them again.

The sound of Merlin’s steady breathing in his ear, Arthur turned around and kicked at the door, before hopping around clutching his foot as spikes of pain radiated up his leg.

 _Happy with yourself, Prince Arthur?_ he snapped in his head, before pounding at the door, then waving his arms frantically at the corner where he was fairly sure the camera was.

Within a few minutes, Tom Collins appeared at the door again.

“What the fuck is it?” he growled as he came in.

Arthur gestured futilely at Merlin. “He’s _ill_. It’s that collar! You can’t leave it on him, he’ll die and-”

“What, you care?” the man sneered. “About a sorcerer? Yeah, I believe that,” he added disbelievingly. But he did crouch beside Merlin, frowning as he brushed the collar around Merlin’s neck. “Damn. Didn’t know he was this powerful.”

Arthur frowned and said, “Well _take it off_ , please, it’s hurting him! You’re magic, aren’t you? You can’t possibly not know what it’s like-”

“I know a hell of a lot more than you think, kid, now shut up,” the man growled.

“ _No_!”

Arthur hadn’t even seen it coming. One second the man was staring at Merlin, and the next, his hand was coming back in a sharp but strong strike, and Arthur screamed as the combined force of the backhand and the magic the man put in it sent him careening across the room, throwing him into the wall.

He landed with a pained huff, back aching fiercely, and looked up in time to see Collins leaving the room, door shutting behind him before he could even get up to try and slip out of it.

He touched the cheek where Collins had hit him, tasted blood on his lip, and sighed, pushing his aching body up and landing beside Merlin on the pallet, grabbing his own water bottle and cleaning up his bloodied lip.

Arthur had just set the bottle back down when Collins reappeared, a small black box that looked like a pager in one hand, and a needle in the other.

And a gun at his hip.

“Move back, kid, I’m dealing with this,” Collins said tersely.

Eyes on the gun and the needle, Arthur moved in front of the prone Merlin and said, “What are you going to do to him?”

“You were right about one thing, that collar needs to come off – but not when he can wake up and use his magic…especially if he’s powerful enough for the magic-suppression to have worked so fast,” Tom Collins said, face impassive and voice sharp. “Now move out of the way before I make you.”

Arthur gulped and nodded, backing up just enough so he could still hold on to Merlin’s hand, before wincing as Collins slipped the needle into a vein in Merlin’s arm and injected whatever it was in there into Merlin’s veins.

Merlin’s breathing became even shallower than before, his skin even paler, and Arthur felt Merlin’s hand go just a little cooler. But he was definitely still alive.

Then Collins took that pager-box thing, unfolding it to reveal a tiny keyboard with numbers on it. He rolled Merlin over and touched the back of the screen to the black square on the collar.

Maybe Collins hadn’t realized it, but Arthur could see the keyboard perfectly clearly, and saw the numbers he entered into the device: 2-1-1-2-1-9-9-2.

He smiled, as he quickly memorized the password, 21121992.

Then he replayed the last four digits in his head, and considered the first four.

21121992\. 2112/1991. 21/12/1992.

He was using their birthday as the password.

Even unconscious, Merlin jerked as the collar came off, then stilled.

“It goes back on tomorrow morning before we take the photograph,” Collins said calmly, taking the collar with him when he left the room.

Arthur looked back at Merlin, and winced at how dead he looked. He looked around himself, then decided he really didn’t care anymore if he was a big baby.

That night, he slept right next to Merlin, keeping a hand over his chest, right above his heart.

Tomorrow, the collar would go back on, and they would hold up another newspaper for another photograph to be sent to their parents. But tonight, he could sleep here, making sure Merlin was alive…and working on a way to get out of here.

They weren’t going to be rescued anytime soon – so they might as well rescue themselves.

~*~

Arthur didn’t know what Tom Collins had planned to do to take care of Merlin in this state, but whatever it was, Arthur wasn’t having any of it. When Collins came with water and a protein shake and chicken broth for Merlin, Arthur watched as Collins got a few spoonfuls down Merlin’s throat, the way he tilted Merlin’s head back and rubbed his throat, and couldn’t take watching it anymore, a gesture that was meant to be caring and intimate. He took all that himself, and Collins seemed all too happy.

“Your problem, then,” he said as Arthur stood between Collins and Merlin.

It was. It took ages to get everything down the unconscious Merlin’s throat, but he managed it in the end, and it filled up considerable amount of time, now, too - useful now that he was effectively on his own for the long, long day. He held Merlin close to him, always keeping a hand on the other boy to feel if anything went wrong.

Come morning when the sedatives were wearing off, the collar went back on, and Arthur flinched when he heard Merlin’s whimper.

“Come on,” he said gently, instead. They went to the loo at the same time, and Arthur felt truly grateful that Merlin was mostly still not lucid as he had to hold Merlin’s prick for him while he pissed, washed his hands for him, and sat him against the wall for a moment while he took care of his own business.

They went back, took the photo, and then Merlin was fully sedated again, and the collar came off, and Arthur breathed a sigh of relief as Collins ran off to deliver the next photo, and barely an hour later, still clutching Merlin tightly to himself, he watched the results on the news of today’s picture.

The country was not happy – that was all Arthur could think as he watched the country (and the world) freak out over their latest daily photo. Normally, of course, they were standing against the blank wall, looking scared and indignant at the camera while holding up the day’s newspaper, headlines and the occasional affirmative statement for them, directly from the newspaper, proving they were still alive and well.

Not today, though.

They were sitting instead of standing for this one, Merlin slumped heavily against Arthur, eyes glazed over, looking down and barely hanging on, barely even conscious. Arthur was staring up at the camera, the bruise on his face clearly visible, the newspaper crinkling in his white-knuckled grip. While he had been pleading with Tom to leave the collar off just a little longer, what the camera had captured perfectly was Arthur’s sheer terror shining in his eyes.

He watched grimly as the country exploded at what appeared to be a sharp spike in their mistreatment.

And he watched in horror as it appeared no one cared about Merlin.

There was certainly a lot of commotion in the news over both of them. Everyone definitely wondered about Arthur’s bruise, if there were any more where they couldn’t see, what he was so afraid of…but no one knew the answer to the last one for sure, and no one would get it, because whenever anyone talked about Merlin, all they cared about was how powerful he had to be for the collar to be affecting him so much and so fast. It was like they didn’t see how ill he was.

Arthur wanted to punch the screen and smash their little pixilated faces in every time he saw them talk like that.

Instead, he just wrapped his arms tighter around Merlin’s sedated form – reminding himself that no matter how ill or dead Merlin looked, at least he was alive, his heart was beating, he was alive – and continued watching, looking desperately for a way out.


	6. Provoke

The Blesseds finally made their demands two days later, when Merlin was recovering from the collar, giving him only one more day to be sedated without the collar before it went back on permanently. Merlin’s breathing was stronger and he wasn’t so pale, so Arthur counted that as a definite plus.

“Money?” Arthur asked when Tom Collins walked in that night. “You go through all this trouble just to get money?”

“Did you see how much we demanded?” he asked sardonically, eyeing the sleeping boy next to Arthur, before gesturing to the telly. “Also, have you considered just watching the stupid cartoons? We got this thing to shut you up but if you keep annoying me I’ll get rid of it.”

“Couldn’t you just rob a few banks for that much money?” Arthur asked, ignoring the man’s threat. “Why go through all this trouble.”

“Let’s see,” Collins said, holding his hands out to his side as if they were scales. “Plan for and gather several professional robbers, personnel, security bypasses, weapons, data, cars, carriers, and safehouses for several bank robberies…or get the security information and handful of personnel for just two kidnappings and one hostage situation?” He moved his hands up and down, weighing them. “Multiple strenuous bank robberies, one easy double-kidnapping hostage situation, several robberies, one hostage situation. It would take several dozen people to rob enough banks. We have three people here to deal with you. Hmm, which will get us the most money with the least amount of cost for us?”

Arthur sighed, deflating as the cold, harsh, and inhuman logic of that hit him.

Then he stared in surprise when his eyes landed on a suspiciously phone-shaped bulge in the man’s pocket.

“Don’t bother,” Collins said, catching Arthur’s sight with malicious glee. “It doesn’t get a signal here, or anywhere else. We can barely get a signal in the other office. Even if you do steal it, it’s useless to you.”

That was…not encouraging.

The man smirked down at Arthur, who glared up at him, before Collins knelt down to examine Merlin, ignoring the way Arthur kept clutching protectively at the unconscious sorcerer. He nodded as he said, much to Arthur’s dismay, “When the collar goes on tomorrow it stays on.”

“But-”

“He’s fine,” Collins snapped, low and dangerous, smirking as he saw Arthur flinch back away from him. “The collar goes back on tomorrow.”

And with that he got up and left.

Only when Arthur could no longer hear the man’s footsteps did he relax his grip around Merlin, turning to switch the little telly back on and watch the news.

Even the combination of his father’s fortunes and whatever money the Prime Minister could scrounge up wouldn’t cover the Blesseds’ demands. They had to know that, right? Even if Father gave up everything he had and Hunith Emrys managed to somehow convince enough of Parliament to just sign out half of the government’s money, neither of which could or would happen, they still wouldn’t be able to pay the Blesseds’ demands.

Arthur watched them replay the chilling video, where Tom Collins’ voice played out demanding what might as well be half the British budget in return for the boys’ safety. He held onto Merlin almost desperately as he listened to the broadcasters come to their final conclusion, completely oblivious to the fact the ones they were talking about were watching.

The Blesseds weren’t after the money.

They just wanted to kill Arthur and Merlin.

He switched the telly to stupid late night shows after that, before turning it off and lying down, head on Merlin’s chest and ear pressed to Merlin’s heart, willing himself to sleep, while letting pieces of a plan start to drift together in his head.

~*~

“He took it off?” Merlin asked, surprised, barely keeping his voice low, still feeling ill apparently.

Arthur nodded. It had been a day and a half since he realized they were doomed to die, and a day since Merlin’s collar came back on fully, and the sedatives had just worn off.

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “And, listen – he used a digital key or something to open it, explains why there’s no latch or anything. You enter in numbers to open the collar, and our birthday is the password!”

Merlin’s eyes widened. “That’s…”

“We can’t wait to be rescued,” Arthur said. “The demands they’re making are impossible. It’s not all up to our parents, and even if it were- a lot of people on the news are already saying it: the Blesseds didn’t kidnap us for money, they are just going to kill us.”

Merlin paled, but stoically just said, “So we need to escape.”

Arthur nodded.

“Knowing the password is helpful,” Merlin said. “But how do we get the key in the first place?”

“…you said the collar keeps the magic inside you, right?” Arthur asked. Merlin nodded. “So can you do magic inside your body?”

Merlin frowned. “It doesn’t really work like that, but…” He turned in his seat and flopped back on the pallet, shutting his eyes and concentrating.

“…well?”

Merlin sighed dejectedly and shook his head, opening his eyes and looking up at Arthur. “I can…I can make things move faster and slower – um, Will says that’s my metabolism? – but that’s it. It’s not even actual magic, just a side-effect of magic that the suppressor doesn’t deal with.”

Arthur frowned as he dropped onto his stomach next to Merlin, the two boys turning on their sides to face each other. “So swallowing stuff to enchant is out of the question…”

“You said he sedated me?” Merlin asked. This time, Arthur nodded. “Metabolism has to do with that, right?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I’ve always been pants at science and things.”

“I think it is,” Merlin continued.

“So that means…?”

“If I make my metabolism fast enough, I can make it wear off, faster than normal.”

Arthur’s eyes widened. “So you can be awake with the collar off!”

“I won’t have much magic, though,” Merlin said. “I spent half the afternoon in that magic-suppressing room at the homeless kids’ center and my magic wasn’t working properly until the next morning.”

“Damn,” Arthur said. That would be problematic. “But you’ll have some, right?”

Merlin nodded. “I don’t know for sure, I could probably lift some things, make some lights, nothing serious or helpful. That’s how it was after that teen-center thingy. This doesn’t seem like a helpful plan…”

Arthur thought.

“He…he had the key with him when he came to put the collar back on, but he didn’t take it out, didn’t even touch it. I think he just keeps them in the same place or something.”

“So what are you thinking?” Merlin asked.

“You fake ill again,” Arthur said. “A while from now, so it’s believable. You get your metabo-thingy going as fast as you can so when he sedates you, it wears off a bit before he comes back. He keeps a sharp eye on me when he does but he won’t be looking out for you – you can levitate the key or just move it or something, somewhere safe when he puts on the collar. He leaves, we get you out of it, you unlock the door, and we run.”

“And then?”

“We wing it,” Arthur said bluntly. “Maybe find a phone, find out where we are, just run as far and fast as we can.”

Merlin nodded. “I think – I think in a week, he’ll definitely believe it if I ‘become ill’ again…sooner than that, actually, because I may actually be sick by then. But in a few days, maybe, they’ll believe it, after last time.”

“Good,” Arthur said.

“What do we do until then?”

“…turn his short temper into carelessness,” Arthur said. “If he gets so mad that he gets careless, it’ll be easier for us to escape.”

“…but also more dangerous,” Merlin said, reaching out and gently brushing over the bruise on Arthur’s jaw.

“We’ll be fine,” Arthur said curtly.

Merlin nodded. “I…I don’t like the plan. But I suppose it’s all we’ve got.” Then he yawned, long and filled with almost-squeaks. Even if the collar’s effects and the sedation had worn off, he was still suffering the consequences. “Almost good plan and almost good night.”

Arthur nodded, suppressing a yawn, himself. “We’ll need to sleep a lot before, get our strength up and stuff.”

With that he curled around Merlin, his head on Merlin’s chest like he’d been doing for the last several nights, as they went to sleep.

“…you know I’m not actually sick anymore, right?”

“Shut up.”

~*~

For the next few days, Arthur kept trying to help Merlin feign ill again, and they both had to reshape their plan once they realized that Merlin was becoming _actually_ ill again.

Merlin didn’t think he felt his illness any more than during the night once they remade their plans.

For the first time in ages, Merlin fisted his dick under the blanket, biting his lip as he tried to think of pretty people and the feeling of his own hand on himself.

And he tried not to scream when he could only get hard, but not finish. Why was this so damn hard? Maybe it was the knowledge that they were being watched. That did make things…weird. But Merlin wasn’t sure he could wait until the morning trip to the loo. But if he couldn’t get himself off by then, anyway-

“Again?”

“Ah!” Merlin jerked at the sound of Arthur’s voice, releasing himself to turn halfway towards the other side of the pallets. Arthur was pushed up on his elbows and nonchalantly gazing at Merlin’s crotch.

He smiled, amused. “Want me to take care of that?”

“Arthur!” Merlin hissed.

“I know, I know, we’re being watched,” Arthur said, flopping back into his thin pillow. “But they’ve already seen us once, anyway…and you’re, um, frustrated. They’ll watch us no matter what we do…so why not-”

“I’m not giving anyone a show!” Merlin said scathingly, trying not to remember the tone of Collins’ voice as he’d mocked Merlin about this very thing.

There was a tense beat of silence.

“It’s not a show, Merlin,” Arthur said, slow and careful. “It’s…taking care of yourself. Nature’s call and all that? Not just for pissing.”

“Sod off,” Merlin said, curling in on himself. At least he could feel himself going soft. “Wait until we get home if you want to wank someone off so badly.”

“What…” Arthur frowned. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“ _You_.”

“Merlin – I don’t…I just – I want to help.”

Merlin snorted, and tried his best to shove the chants of queer, queer, queer witchboy from his head.

“Merlin-”

“ _Leave me alone._ ”

There was a long, tense silence.

“…I just want to-”

“ _Don’t_!” Merlin shouted, scooting away from Arthur.

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said, hurt, and Merlin felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t really Arthur’s fault, was it? Merlin wasn’t sure if it was his own or Collins’, but…probably not Arthur’s, at any rate.

“I’m sorry,” Merlin said, quiet and a little more even. “Just…please, leave me alone?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said, and Merlin heard the rustle of blankets as Arthur tucked himself back in for sleep. “Good…good night.”

“Good night,” Merlin said.

He wasn’t going to cry. He _wasn’t_.

~*~

“Wake up!”

Merlin groaned awake, about to beg Mum for five more minutes, before the voice registered as Tom’s, and he shot up, scrambling back until he hit Arthur’s still-waking form.

“You know the drill,” the man said, shoving the newspaper at them. “Hurry up, this one’s late as it is.”

Merlin nodded as Arthur pushed himself up, and he and Arthur stood up, holding up the newspaper between them, making sure the date was clearly visible. Arthur frowned as he probably noticed Merlin was running a fever again, hair damp with sweat, but didn’t say anything.

“That’s it,” Tom said, fiddling with the camera.

Behind the paper, Arthur grabbed Merlin’s sweaty hand, but not before folding Merlin’s fingers under his so one was sticking out, the middle finger, in front of the paper, Arthur putting his own at an angle to it. Just as they had planned. Both boys schooled their features into one of blank calm, hoping the defiance would shine through in their eyes. They were the ‘Britain Boys’, as some newscaster had called them, and they weren’t going to be controlled by anyone.

He hoped.

“C’mon, boys, time for the money shot,” Tom said snidely, snapping the photo quickly, before practically running out the door, muttering to himself about the time and oversleeping.

As soon as they heard the lock click and the footsteps fade away, he and Arthur broke apart laughing.

Later that day, they watched delightedly at the news report of their gimmick.

 _“…it’s obvious from Merlin’s paleness and fever and Arthur’s bruise that the boys are still going through a serious ordeal,” the newscaster in question said. “But it is also clear the boys’ spirits are as strong as never before, seen in both their overtly defiant expressions in today’s photograph, and the covert V they made in it.”_

And there was the picture, with the bright red circle around where they used their two middle-fingers to make a V-sign, flipping off Tom without him even realizing it in his rush. That was why they picked today to do it.

 _“University students around the country have shown their support for the boys by gathering together to display the sign amidst vigils and marches in their support.”_

Arthur gripped Merlin’s hand as the camera cut to a scene with hundreds of students at one uni march-vigil thing, holding hands as they sang songs of support and chanted. He and Merlin grinned at each other at the chants of “Stay strong, Britain Boys!” rang out across the country, at least according to the newspeople, which flickered between several universities showing similar scenes, most of them chanting the same thing.

“We’re strong,” Merlin said, as if those people could hear them. “We’re strong.”

The scene cut to King Uther and Mum, giving a brief press conference together in light of the turn of direction this photo has created.

“However crass their method,” Uther said. “Their embodiment of the British spirit of stoicism and strength is truly heartening in such a dark situation.”

Arthur and Merlin shared a look.

“How much do you think they’ll yell at us for the ‘rude hand gesture’ once we’re out of here?” Arthur asked.

“Either more than ever before or never again,” Merlin said, before they looked back to the telly screen.

“If you can hear us, boys,” Mum said. “Stay strong.”

They couldn’t hear anything else after that, because at that point Collins came roaring in screaming, “You fucking little bastards!”

Heart pumping faster than a hummingbird and adrenaline filling his veins, Merlin scrambled back, dragging Arthur with him.

Unfortunately, it didn’t do them much good.

~*~

The country had exploded in morale and support as pictures of the boys’ photo circulated around, everywhere. Vigils and marches in their name were skyrocketing, sorcerers throwing up magical fireworks while the streets were filled with everyone from toffs to chavs marching side by side. Since yesterday morning, “Stay Strong, Britain Boys!” had somehow been plastered in signs all over the country, written on shirts and skins, created in lights and fireworks, and painted on hastily made banners and hung up everywhere, becoming the temporary, unofficial motto of the United Kingdom. Most of the Commonwealth nations, as well as other random countries like America and Brazil and India and whoever the newspeople felt like talking about, were showing some support derived from this newfound reassurance that whatever happened, the boys must be all right.

That took a turn for the worse just this morning. Even as they nursed their aching bodies, they were glued to the screen as newscasters again and again replayed the clip of Father and Hunith standing next to each other, Father going white as a sheet and Hunith actually crying, just a few tears, at the sight of today’s photo.

Each of the boys’ faces was covered in bruises, and a little blood had still been trickling down from Merlin’s lip in the picture. Their eyes were red and puffy from crying, and their middle fingers were both broken. The only saving grace of the picture was the look of defiance on their faces, but even that was muted beneath the pain.

They spent hours trying to follow the little instructions that came with the two finger-splints Collins had tossed in after the photo, wincing more at each other’s pain than their own, as they watched the cries of ‘child abuse’ and ‘impending murder’ sear across the news screens, half the people encouraging the Britain Boys to stay strong, the other half pleading with them to stop so they didn’t end up hurt even more. It didn’t help that Arthur’s bruise from before still hadn’t completely faded, and Merlin was looking ill, pale, and sweaty again.

Tom Collins was _not happy_ about the way the boys were still defiant in their photos, even if it was only in their eyes.

The next day, they had even more bruises, and only the top half of the picture was seen, the bottom half completely disappeared. Everyone remarked on this, and Arthur held onto Merlin, trying not to be upset that their finger splints flipping off the camera were hidden – though the tops of their fingers were shown, so everyone knew that they were there. Merlin was now visibly ill again, and Arthur knew they would have to act soon before Merlin was too ill for their plan to work.

The day after, the boys had their hands bound behind their back to legs of a chair, the newspaper balancing between them – Collins’ solution to their antics in the photos, though it did little for his own self, likely now sporting a few bruises of his own from the boys kicking out at him. The nation erupted at the sight of them bound for the picture, but luckily interpreted it for what it was – proof that the boys were so adamant to piss off their captors that they had to be tied down for the picture.

In hindsight, though, they shouldn’t have reacted so joyously (at least obviously joyously for the monitoring camera) to that, for within just a few hours of them cheering at the uni kids adding the latest picture to their candle-lit vigil line-up, Tom Collins came in and took the telly away.

That night, Arthur had to swallow down bile as a needle was injecting sedatives into Merlin yet again. His fear wasn’t acted, and Arthur slept with his head on Merlin’s chest, desperate to be reminded that Merlin was alive.


	7. Escape

At first their plan worked perfectly. Merlin was, unknown to Collins, already awake. Arthur had been careful to prop Merlin up and facing away from where the cameras seemed to be, ostensibly to give him water and in reality to talk to him. When Collins came in, Merlin moved the key from Collins’ pocket, enough that Arthur could grab it without Collins noticing it even moving.

Key safely hidden in his own pocket and covered by his jumper, Arthur stayed close to Merlin for the collar being put back on, for the photograph, and afterwards stood between Merlin and Collins, saying, “He’s fine! Better off without the sedatives!” And Merlin ‘struggled’ to sit up a little.

Collins just rolled his eyes. “You keep thinking that, then. Don’t blame me if he becomes worse thanks to you.”

Arthur paled at the thought, even if he remembered this was just an act, and stood his ground as Collins left the room.

Immediately, Arthur whirled around and pulled Merlin close to him. He was fairly certain there were a few other people in the building from Collins’ comments, and it wouldn’t do for them to see him freeing Merlin and alerting Collins.

But just as they managed to get the collar off, Merlin gasping, for the first time conscious while this happened, they heard a roar of anger from down the corridor outside the door.

They shared a look before scrambling up, just in time for Collins to barge in, eyes bulging at the sight of Merlin without his collar.

“You fucking little brats-”

He ran forward, charging at them, but this time, Merlin held out his hand, crying out from pain even as his eyes glowed gold, and threw Collins aside headfirst into a wall. His gun clattered to the floor, as well as a phone and the collar and some gum of all things, and Merlin stared in shock as the man woozily started trying to push himself up.

Arthur didn’t let him.

He ran forward, vaguely noting Merlin’s gold eyes when he shoved Collins into the wall again, and before Collins could even realize it Arthur grabbed his hair, screamed, “Who’s not so high and mighty now?!” and slammed his head into the wall.

“Arthur!” Merlin shouted, but Arthur ignored him, pulling back on the barely-moving man and hitting his head on the wall again, and when the man got enough leverage to push him away, turning them both and slamming them against the wall, and Arthur screamed when he heard a crack and felt sharp agony radiate from his chest. But Collins was still attacking, and he kicked the man right in the groin, and managed a punch in the neck, putting Collins back against the wall. He saw Merlin’s eyes go gold again, and aided by the magic, he slammed Collins’ head into the wall one last time, letting go when he saw a splotch of blood on the wall, and Collins fell limp and unconscious to the ground.

“Is he…?” Merlin asked.

“…he’s still breathing, I think,” Arthur said, though he couldn’t really see Collins chest moving much, if at all, before shaking his head and moving to the door. “Doesn’t matter. Grab the phone and let’s go.”

Merlin nodded, swallowing and looking around the room.

“Come on!” Arthur snapped.

Merlin grabbed the phone with his good hand and ran out of the room after Arthur.

~*~

The hallways were all drab gray – like an abandoned office building, rather than an abandoned warehouse like Merlin was sure it was.

“Where do we go?” Merlin asked, choking on his words, throat still sticking to itself from being nearly strangled. “Do you remember anything from when we were brought in?”

“Um…” Arthur shut his eyes for a moment, then said, “Left!”

They ran to their left, down the corridor, and then right, then left again. They headed down two flights of stairs and seven corridors, footsteps fading and coming and fading again.

When they heard footsteps behind them – the other two men Tom Collins said were in the building – they detoured. Arthur tried to run further, but Merlin knew that no matter how fast they were, a bunch of angry grown-ups would be faster.

Instead, he pulled Arthur into the first unlocked door they found – a cleaner’s cupboard and utility cupboard.

Merlin was gasping with pain – they had the little splints for their fingers but still no painkillers. He pressed the fist of his good hand – still clutching onto the phone – to his mouth to stifle himself and his breathing, and beside him, Arthur was doing the same, one hand against his mouth, the other against his fractured rib.

The footsteps slowed as they approached the door outside, and panicking, Merlin grabbed Arthur and pushed them back, back, back, behind some boxes, out of the way of the single small utility light in the corner.

“They’re just two kids, how can they evade us?” a rather large-sounding man said.

In the utility light, Arthur, his breathing under control, mouthed _driver_ , and Merlin realized the man who talked was the bloke who’d driven them here in the first place.

The footsteps slowed, but didn’t stop, going past the door to their cupboard, then continuing on down the hall.

“All right, go into all the crosshalls, start back-checking the rooms, offices, cupboards, anything with a door on it. They’re two little kids, it won’t be hard to find them…”

The man’s voice faded and his footsteps followed.

Merlin slowly lowered his hand, trying not to cry at the pain of his burning lungs, getting barely enough air through his swollen throat.

“Give me the phone,” Arthur said. “We need to switch it off for now. Or – you can do it.”

“What do you plan to do?” Merlin asked, pulling out the phone from his pocket and squinting at the little buttons in the low light.

“Think,” Arthur said.

“…we’re doomed,” Merlin muttered.

“Thank you, Emrys, for your great show of faith.” A pause, and Merlin finished silencing the phone, before switching it off all together.

“Oh, hell – we’re in a cleaner’s cupboard. Tools, supplies…” Arthur started groping around. “First, we need a torch of some sort-”

Arthur gasped as the room was suddenly flooded with a blue-white light, and Merlin smirked, taking his hand away from the little ball of light he made (and he tried not to wince as his magic screeched at having to do even this much this soon).

“You could’ve asked,” he said instead.

Arthur gulped as he stared at the light, and Merlin realized that this was the first time Arthur had ever clearly seen him using magic, save their fight against Collins just moments before. With the exception of the little bit he half-used during their first fight, Merlin had never used magic in front of him – all their meetings had been in public, and Merlin wasn’t supposed to use magic in public.

And when they finally met in private, Merlin was already collared.

“…g-good,” Arthur said, before turning back to start looking through things again. “Look for…anything useful. Probably not cleaning supplies.”

“Right…” Merlin said, and the two started looking around. He created another ball of light to follow Arthur, and took his own around as he started shuffling through the boxes.

“There!”

Merlin frowned to where Arthur was pointing. “You can move the light, just poke the center of the ball.”

“Er…you do it,” Arthur said, looking hesitantly at the ball.

Glaring at Arthur, he poked it with his finger instead of his magic, and moved it to where Arthur was pointing – near a vent between two shelves.

“A vent?”

“The size,” Arthur said.

“What about it?” Merlin asked.

“We can fit, right?” Arthur asked.

“Er, yeah?”

“But what about them?” he asked, jerking his head towards the door. “All of them are really big. They wouldn’t fit at all, or they wouldn’t have room to move if they did.”

Merlin’s eyes widened as he took in this information.

“We’d be practically blind if we went that way – we’d have no idea where we’re going,” Merlin said. Out here, at least they could clearly see their direction and quickly move.

“They won’t have any idea, either,” Arthur said.

“…we’d have to be really quiet,” Merlin said. “The vents would echo and they would be able to hear us from rooms away. I can muffle some of it with my magic, but we still need to be as quiet as possible, just in case.”

“Okay,” Arthur said. “So let’s get as far as we can on foot before we resort to the vents.”

They continued searching around for anything that even looked useful. Arthur found some sort of pocket tool set and jammed that into his torn trouser pocket. Merlin found some duct tape, and wrapped it around Arthur’s chest to splint his ribs.

“I feel like we’re in a spy film,” Merlin said, finishing up taping all over Arthur’s chest as Arthur tugged his shirt back on. “It’s a lot scarier than the movies make it look.”

“If we’re a James Bond film, I’m James Bond,” Arthur said.

“Why are you James Bond?!” Merlin protested.

“Why not?” Arthur said. “It can be like the World Is Not Enough! The first Bond girl in that is a sorceress. You can be my Bond girl.”

“I’m not a girl!” Merlin said. “Besides, she turned traitor, remember?” He looked over to his ball of light. “Sorcerers are almost never good in movies.”

“There was…The Sword in the Stone?”

Merlin snorted. “That was a cartoon. And it wasn’t even real magic, that kind of stuff doesn’t exist.”

Arthur rolled his eyes. “You can cry about sorcerers in the media later.”

“…I want to be James Bond,” Merlin said. “Or maybe not. Really scary.”

“Well James Bond had training, didn’t he?” Arthur said. “You could train up…well not you, you’re too scrawny-”

“I can too!” Merlin said. “Or I would, if sorcerers were allowed in the army.”

Arthur smirked. “It’s not just army stuff, you know.”

“I can sneak about and things,” Merlin said, shuffling through more boxes, as though he was fairly certain they had anything they could get some use out of.

“You?!” Arthur said incredulously.

“I got us this far, didn’t I?” Merlin demanded. “And we’re not dead yet.”

Arthur’s face abruptly fell, and he turned to continue looking through the boxes as reality came back to them both. “Yeah, well…let’s keep it that way.”

Merlin nodded. This wasn’t a James Bond film because this was real life – no matter how much he wished otherwise.

“We should call someone for help,” Merlin said. “When we can.”

“Was there a signal in here?”

Merlin remembered the phone just before he switched it off and shook his head. “No. I think we need to be near the offices or something.”

“There was another office someplace down the hall from where we were,” Arthur said. “If there are any building plans or anything useful, we can look there. And they won’t expect us to go back – they’ll be searching outward and away from there, probably. I think. I hope.”

 _I hope so, too,_ Merlin thought.

“So that’s settled, then?” Merlin asked. “Other office, call, look for a way out?”

Arthur nodded, pressing his ear to the door. “Put out the lights.”

Merlin did so. “Anything?” he asked.

Arthur shook his head, and opened the door. “Come on.”

~*~

It took them half an hour to go back the distance they ran in five minutes. Every few minutes they would hear distant – and sometimes not so distant – footsteps and hide, sometimes going back, once receding down a whole flight of stairs.

But they made it to that other office unseen and unscathed. Once they reached the floor the office was on, they heard and saw no one – Arthur was right.

Merlin shut the door behind them once they reached the office that looked to be their captors’ headquarters, a sparse room with a lot of tables and desks and filing cabinets but only three folding chairs, and he immediately switched on the phone.

“There’s a signal!” Merlin said. “Only one bar, but it’s there…no, two bars! Two bars!”

“Call your mum,” Arthur said. “I’ll start looking around for anything useful.”

Merlin nodded as he put the phone on speaker and started dialing. After weeks of being a hostage, it felt weird to just be calling her as if it were any other day.

But if anything could get them rescued and get them home, it was this.

“ _Hello?_ ” Mum answered. “ _Who is this, and how did you get this number-_ ”

“Mum?”

There was a beat of silence, then, “ _MERLIN?!_ ”

Merlin winced a little at the volume even as he could hear a flurry of movement in the background of his mother’s voice.

“ _Merlin, sweetie, are you all right? Where are you? How-_ ”

“No time, Mum,” Merlin said. “We’re in a factory or office building or something – we got out of the room we were being held in, but we’re still in the building – and so are the people who took us.”

“ _Oh, god, how – never mind, Merlin. Is Prince Arthur with you?_ ”

“Hello, Mrs. Emrys,” Arthur called out. Merlin put the phone on speaker.

“ _Hello, Prince Arthur,_ ” she said. Someone said something in the background, and she said, “They’re calling your father and they will patch him through soon.”

“Aha!” Arthur muttered, and Merlin saw him holding up what appeared to be a map of the building. There was also a map of where the building was. “We’re in Wales, somewhere. Tell her we’re in Wales somewhere!”

“ _I heard,_ ” Mum said. “ _And so did the tech team, they’re all listening, right now.” A pause. “Are you boys all right? How are you? We saw your fingers were broken, is anything else hurt?_ ”

“Hi, tech team. Arthur broke a rib or something, and I got that collar off but my throat is swollen from that and from Collins – he was the guy holding us – trying to strangle me-”

 _“Trying to WHAT?!”_ she shouted.

“-but we’re fine! We’re fine! We can both breathe okay and we’re getting by. We’re in the building’s main office to look for a way out.”

He heard her sniffle and realized she was crying.

“We’re in Anglesey, somewhere,” Arthur said. “In the middle.”

“Anglesey?” Merlin said.

“I found stationery!” Arthur said. “We’re in some place called ‘623 Astolat Road’…and this building used to be some sort of appliance company headquarters from the looks of it. And it…it’s a note saying to call someone named Bob and it’s dated thirty years ago!”

 _“They’re looking it up now,”_ Mum said. _“They say that the signal is being scrambled or hidden or something like that, it’s getting difficult to trace your exact coordinates with the call. Is there any information on the Blesseds? Have you found a way out?”_

“Still looking,” Arthur called out again. “Merlin, can you unlock the filing cabinets?”

Merlin did so.

 _“They found the location the Prince gave. They know where you are!”_ Hunith said.

“Good,” Merlin said.

Then there was a beep, then another, from her end.

 _“Arthur,”_ Hunith said. _“They’re patching your father through.”_

Arthur, eyes wide, abandoned his search and huddled next to Merlin.

There was a series of beeps, then King Uther’s voice saying, “Arthur?”

“Father!” Arthur cried out, sounding just as relieved and anxious as Merlin felt as he grabbed at the phone and brought it close in front of his face as if it could somehow bring him closer to his dad.

 _“Arthur,”_ Uther breathed out with a sigh of relief. _“How are you?”_

“Okay,” Arthur said. “I could be better.”

 _“Can you boys get outside?”_ Uther asked. _“Or somewhere safe?”_

Phone taken away from him, Merlin went over to the desk. “We’re looking for a way…out…”

His eye was caught by the sight of the old computer, extremely old, and he wondered just how Arthur had missed this.

“Merlin?” Arthur asked, frowning. Merlin pointed at the computer. “What? It’s an old computer, from whoever last owned the place-”

“But there’s no dust on it,” Merlin said. “And the casing – it’s all off. And…and there’s a cable – like one that can connect to the camera Tom Collins was using.”

Arthur stared, eyes widening as realization hit him.

“Are you saying the computer is new?” Arthur asked.

 _“What’s going on, boys?”_ Mum asked.

“We found a computer, we think the Blesseds might be using it,” Arthur said.

 _“Can you open it?”_ Uther asked.

Merlin shrugged, then remembered he was on a phone. “Maybe.”

“Pull off the top,” Arthur said, and Merlin held out his hand, and let the scraps of magic he could feel willing to listen to him, despite leftover fear of the collar, come together to lift off the front of the casing, then the top.

The casings of the ridiculously old computer were the outsides of a box, completely hollow inside – and thus filled with a laptop, a camera, and multiple modern-looking wires and cables. Even an iPod!

“There’s a laptop!” Arthur said.

 _“Can you get into it?”_ Uther asked. _“Try. We have tech teams on both of our ends here to help. If there’s any information that can help you escape, it’ll be in there.”_

For five minutes, Merlin and Arthur both tried – mostly Merlin, because Arthur was apparently terrible with computers – before they both related dejected, “We can’t.”

“Maybe we can at least carry it with us?” Arthur said. “To give to them once we get out of here?”

“Carry a laptop, Arthur?” Merlin asked. “There’s no way we can, not if we want to move fast.”

He heard furious background talking on the phone, then a moment later Mum said, _“Merlin, you need to focus on getting out of there!”_

“But this is important,” Merlin said.

“ _You don’t have time, sweetheart,_ ” she said.

“But no one knows anything about them, and we want them to be caught...we need them to be caught! We’ll never be at rest again, otherwise!” Merlin insisted, already fiddling with the laptop.

 _“...be quick,_ ” she said, sounding ready to start crying again. “ _And remember, escaping comes first._ ”

 _“Arthur,”_ Uther’s voice commanded. _“You need to keep looking around the office, find something, a map or plans of the building, to get you out of there and somewhere safe. Getting information on the Blesseds is good but your number one priority is getting out of there. Merlin, we have a computer expert to help you.”_

Merlin magicked open all the locks on all the filing cabinets for Arthur to search through, before plopping down with the laptop in his lap and listening to the technician’s careful descriptions of what to do with the laptop to open it and get out the hard-drive.

Soon enough, the hard-drive was out, and small enough for Merlin to jam in his pocket, and Arthur was laying out multiple building plans and maps across the floor, before zeroing in on one that showed blue vent-maintenance lines along with the building plans.

 _“Can you get out?”_ Uther asked.

“Yeah,” Arthur said, already tracing paths with the pencil Merlin found him. “There are two ways we can walk out of here and if we go through the vent system it will be difficult going downstairs but-”

Merlin heard something in the distance, and said suddenly, “Shh!”

Arthur frowned, but when he saw the panicked look on Merlin’s face, he fell silent.

Silent enough to hear a door being opened and closed in the distance.

“They’re coming!” Merlin hissed into the phone.

 _“What?!”_ Mum called out.

“We’ve got to go,” Arthur said, panicking.

 _“Good luck, Arthur,”_ Uther said. _“Stay strong.”_

“Of course we will,” Arthur said. “We’re the Britain Boys.”

Both their parents choked out a laugh.

 _“I love you, Merlin,”_ Mum said. Merlin could hear her tears.

“I love you too, Mum,” Merlin said, on the verge of crying, himself.

Without another word, Arthur hung up and switched off the phone.

“We need to make it look like we were never here,” Arthur said calmly, and Merlin promptly let his magic loose shoving everything back where they found it – even replacing the hard-drive of the laptop, hoping desperately they didn’t look too closely and see the small scratches in the black matte from where Merlin had been nervous getting it out and back in.

Arthur shut all the filing cabinets, looking down at the one map they had written on, wincing at the sounds it made as he tried to fold it, and then shoved it behind one of the other filing cabinets, where it remained completely hidden.

Both boys gasped when they heard a door opening and closing down the corridor on their floor.

They wouldn’t get out without being seen.

“We’re trapped,” Merlin whispered.

“Temporarily,” Arthur said, before yanking Merlin with him towards the back corner of the room, where two filing cabinets made an almost-corner with a small table. Arthur dropped to the floor and crawled in backwards, pulling Merlin in so he was sitting in the V of Arthur’s legs.

He leaned back, trying to get as far away from the opening of the almost-corner as he could, before Arthur gasped in pain as Merlin pressed up right against his ribs.

“Sorry!” Merlin hissed.

Abruptly, Arthur’s hand was over his mouth.

“Pull your legs in and keep quiet!” Arthur whispered low and sharp in his ear.

Merlin had just enough time to comply before the door opened, and two men burst in.

He flinched as one man slammed a chair into the desk at the front of the room in what sounded like a fit of frustration, before the other one yanked it back out and dropped into it with a furious sigh as the first one started pacing around the room. Merlin pulled his legs in tighter in fear.

“They’re two fucking kids,” the ‘driver’ said, pacing. “How the hell did they get out in the first place?”

“Because we put Tom in charge of them, that’s why,” the desk-guy said.

Merlin heard the sound of him pulling apart the ‘computer’ and pulling out the laptop, and was immensely glad to have replaced the hard-drive just moments before.

“Higher-ups are not going to be happy about this,” desk-guy said. “Damnit, we should have outfitted the whole building with cameras!”

“You’re not seriously going to tell them, are you?” the driver asked.

“Tom needs to be seen to, and they’re going to need to know the plan’s been compromised,” the desk-guy said.

“We need more time, we can find these kids! They’re going to kill us – maybe even literally! – if they find out we lost two stupid kids.”

“We need back-up,” the desk-guy said. “I’ll send it in an e-mail, encrypted. It’ll allow for at least a minute or two of delay before they call, and for me to explain the situation before they do.”

The driver whirled around and kicked a filing cabinet in frustration – the one next to the one behind which they were hiding. Merlin felt himself and Arthur both flinch away from the vibrations, Arthur’s hand tightening over Merlin’s mouth as desk-guy typed and typed and typed, before clicking the mouse-pad a few times.

“..e-mail’s sent out,” the man said.

“And?”

“And now we wait.”

The men fell into discussion about how to relay the situations while making themselves look as not-bad as possible.

Merlin slowed his breathing to make it even more inaudible than it already was, and behind him, he felt Arthur do the same, though less so – he was already holding himself oddly due to his ribs.

Arthur was warm, his chest at Merlin’s back, his legs around Merlin’s arms, his hand on Merlin’s face. Merlin could feel Arthur’s heartbeat against his own, and felt abruptly grateful for the hand over his mouth. Had it ever been any other time, Merlin would have been indignant and even furious at being silenced. But right now, it was comforting, reassuring, helping to make sure they weren’t caught.

Like when Merlin flinched again as the still silence was sharply broken by the shrill ring of the man’s mobile phone.

“Yeah?” the desk-guy answered.

Merlin heard the faintest sound of voices over the phone – meaning whoever it was on the other end of the line, they were shouting at computer guy.

“Yeah, well – it was Tom! I know, I know, I – no…but! …yes, ma’am. Yes ma’am!”

And so it went, for several more minutes, before the guy grunted affirmatively one last time, ended with “Yes, ma’am, and thank you,” and hung up.

A moment, then he said to the driver, “We’ve got to lock down the building, lock all doors and windows, starting from the ground up – they’ll probably try to get out the same way they came in. Back-up will be here in less than an hour.”

The driver just sighed, deflated from his earlier tension. “Right, then – let’s go.”

The worst moment came next when both men got up, to the sound of shuffling papers and the laptop being booted down and put away. If either of them just took a few steps over and looked down…

But they didn’t.

The two men left, the driver grumbling all the way, and once Merlin could no longer hear their footsteps even in the distance, both boys sighed in relief.

Crawling out from their hiding place, Merlin said, “If they’re locking down the building, how are we supposed to get out?”

“That…get out the map.”

Merlin used his magic, more scraps coming back to him now, to get the map from behind the filing cabinet, and as Arthur started looking it over he pulled out the laptop again and used his magic to pull out the screws and yet again pull out the hard-drive.

“Damnit,” Arthur said. “They’re ahead of us – the ground floor will already be locked down by the time we could get there without being seen or heard.”

“…they said ground-up, right?” Merlin asked, as he replaced the laptop where it was, it and the computer-casing looking untouched as he jammed the hard-drive in his pocket again. “Is there a way to get to the roof?”

“There…there is!”

“Through the vents?” Merlin asked. “Because they’ll be back up here soon to lock down the doors and things.”

“Yeah, yeah, there’s a way,” Arthur said, tracing his finger over the new path. “It’s simpler than trying to get down, too, easier to remember. Call our parents again, tell them to tell the rescue team to land on the roof for us.”

Merlin pulled out the phone, switched it on, and made the call.

It barely even rang once before Mum answered.

 _“Hello?”_ she asked, voice nervous as she greeted them, as a beep sounded in.

“Mum,” Merlin said. “Can you get the rescue team to land on the roof?”

 _“The roof?”_ Uther’s voice cut in, apparently automatically patched through.

“They’re locking down the building from the ground up, so we’re going even further up,” Arthur said, urgency in his voice as he and Merlin both looked at the door, towards the outside where the two men were.

“We have to go, as fast as possible,” Merlin said.

 _“The SAS is already being contacted,”_ Mum said.

“We can go directly from here,” Arthur said, pointing to the far wall where the vent opening was just above one of the filing cabinets. “Pull the grating off.”

Merlin did so, magic quickly unscrewing all four of the screws holding it in at once, and then levitating it down carefully, putting most of his magic into trying to stifle the noise.

 _“The SAS have been contacted and informed,”_ Uther said.

“Good, because we really have to go,” Arthur said. “Goodbye, Father.”

“Goodbye,” Uther said, voice thick. “Good luck.”

 _“I love you, Merlin,”_ Mum said. _“Please come back to me in one piece.”_

“Will do, Mum,” Merlin said, and then ended the call, chest clenching as he cut off the communication and switched off the phone, as Arthur folded the small map and clenched it in his hand.

Arthur climbed onto the table, and then the filing cabinet, and peered into the shaft. “It’s small but manageable. And filthy. Can you clear the air in it ahead of us so we’re not breathing that in and getting poisoned or whatever.

“Yeah, yeah,” Merlin said, having climbed up after him, magicking up a light wind to clear the air in the shafts without causing too much attention. “I can muffle some noise, but not all of it. We still have to be as quiet as possible. And with all that metal I can only use a little bit of light, or it might reflect too much and they’ll notice.”

“If we hear them, stop,” Arthur added as he crawled into the vent. The shaft was running perpendicular to the opening, so as he crawled in he turned to the left, and Merlin, a moment later, scooted so he was on the right side and behind Arthur.

The vent shaft was tight – Merlin couldn’t even stay on his hands and knees completely, needing to be in a somewhat-position for push-ups, barely two inches of space around his shoulders. It was claustrophobic, and the smells were horrific, dust and something like death. But they could move. He conjured up a tiny ball of light and made it float ahead of Arthur, and he tried not to grimace at just how filthy it was inside here.

He slithered back so that his head was by the opening, just in time to hear the door down the corridor open again.

“Quickly!” Arthur snapped, and Merlin levitated the grating up and convinced the screws to go back in, and moved so he wasn’t in front of the opening in the shaft, then stilled just in time for the footsteps to reach the office door – then go past it.

He and Arthur were completely silent for a moment, frozen with fear.

Then Arthur started moving, slowly, so slowly, but quietly, and Merlin copied him exactly, keeping only the tips of his shoes against the metal, knees as leverage, pushing forward on them and using his arms to slowly pull forward, resting on his stomach each pause before using those muscles, that motion, again. Arthur whimpered every now and then, the actions harsh on his ribs, and Merlin tried to brace Arthur’s rib with his magic, but it was difficult, and there was still only so much he could do. He wasn’t a Healer sorcerer by any means, but suddenly wished he’d paid more attention to Gaius’s ramblings during tutoring sessions.

They would hear voices in the distances from various directions and freeze, then they would continue once they faded again, though Merlin always felt like they should be hearing his heartbeat, pounding in fear of being caught, found, and trapped in this vent shaft when they were, this tiny and narrow space where they wouldn’t be able to move or even breathe properly.

But inexplicably, they made it. They had turned through multiple junctions, then reached one that, instead of branching off to the side, branched upwards into much larger shaft, narrow maintenance rungs jutting out of one side. At the top, they could see the faintest beams of light - the firs sunlight either of them have seen in a month.

They paused one last time, listening carefully for the sounds of voices, footsteps, doors, anything. But they had taken long enough that the men had apparently gone back downstairs to look for them again – or at least, they weren’t by any nearby openings to this part of the vent shaft, which was good enough.

The time Merlin spent hanging from a few rungs as he worked at the vertical grating at the top of this shaft, grating with low sunlight coming through the slates, was possibly one of the most terrifying times of his life, Arthur directly below him, the sounds possibly making their way across this floor through the vent shaft, and having to focus on so many pieces at once as he unscrewed the grating and pushed it out, his palms sweating and threatening to drop them both to their doom every moment.

When Merlin spilled out of the opening and onto the floor of the roof, he was crying – with relief. He squinted and had to close his eyes and blink owlishly in the bright afternoon sunlight, but still he turned his face up and into the warmth and brightness they’d been deprived of for so long. Beside him, Arthur was giggling in victory, and Merlin broke out laughing in relief. They weren’t out of danger yet, but this close to home, having gone this far...

“It shouldn’t be long, now,” Arthur said, leaning against the top bit of the shaft and clutching at his ribs as Merlin refit the grating back in, just in case. “And they’ll be here – and we’ll be safe.”

“Not long, now,” Merlin agreed.

And it wasn’t.


	8. Rescue

  


[ ](http://deathjunke.livejournal.com/112887.html)

A bunch of soldiers came for them, in a big helicopter that both boys waved at</a> even as they scuttled back while it landed.

Several soldiers with big guns hopped out before it even landed, and four of them surrounded Arthur and Merlin in moments, one man without a gun crouching before them.

“Are you boys okay?” the one crouching asked, pulling up his mask to show a kind face beneath the helmet and goggles, shouting to be heard.

“Kind of,” Merlin shouted back, as Arthur wheezed slightly.

The man smiled. “I can work with that. I’m Captain Dup-….Captain Bedivere, from the SAS. We’re here to take you home!”

Merlin and Arthur nodded, grinning at each other as they ran towards the helicopter, the four large soldiers surrounding them.

“Any broken bones?” Bedivere ask. “Besides your famous fingers?”

“Arthur’s got a broken rib, I think,” Merlin said, and accordingly, while Merlin was helped onto the heli by being lifted up from under his arms, Bedivere grabbed Arthur by the waist to help him up.

Inside, the door was pulled shut, as Merlin saw the shadow of another helicopter overhead, and he and Arthur were seated against a bench that ran the length of both sides of the chopper, as Merlin realized there were yet more soldiers on here.

“Any other injuries?” Bedivere asked, before he stopped and stared at Merlin’s neck. The actual collar was gone, but there were still some burns left, and some bruises from their escape.

“This,” Merlin said, pointing to his neck. “That’s it.”

“Not much worse,” Arthur echoed.

Bedivere nodded, before shouting some random things which sounded like flight commands at the piloting soldiers, and he told the rest of the boys to “Strap in for exfil!”, before he set about using the belts along the benches to strap them in, being careful with Arthur’s chest and Merlin’s neck.

Merlin continued to clutch onto Arthur’s arm, and Bedivere just wound the belts around them as one person instead of trying to separate them.

“Merlin,” Bedivere shouted as he felt the helicopter start to rise. “This is going to be a bumpy ride, so you’ll need to support the prince and keep a firm grip on those ribs. Prince Arthur, you’ll need to keep Merlin steady in case he has trouble breathing the higher up in the air we get.”

Merlin nodded tiredly, him and Arthur leaning into each other. He could feel his heartbeat slowing as the thoughts of home flew through his head.

Bedivere grinned back. “You boys are going home. Your parents are worried sick.”

Merlin smiled at the man a bit, only a bit – even his face felt tired. “We know.”

“There was a telly – in the room we were being held in,” Arthur said, leaning much more heavily against Merlin than Merlin was against him. “We saw. Everything, watched all the news.”

Bedivere smiled, then. “Well, then, I have to say – that move with the hands, it was brilliant. Stupid, but brilliant. But even if you saw the news, you have no idea how much it helped the people believe in you.”

“I think we have some idea,” Merlin said, breath fading in more relieved laughter, managing another small smile, as he felt Arthur tremble with almost-laughter beside him. Merlin felt like he was bordering on hysterical and delirious, but it didn’t matter because they were going home. “We-”

BANG

Merlin and Arthur jumped as the soldiers all tensed, before suddenly the trained men were pulling themselves out of their restraints and running towards the doors.

“What was that?” Merlin asked, worried. What now, when they were so close to escaping?!

Before Bedivere could answer, they were hit by another barrage of BANG-BANG-BANG’s, and Merlin screamed as several of them landed on the outside of the chopper, only feet away from where he and Arthur sat – he could feel the vibrations in the metal walls.

He didn’t know how, but suddenly he and Arthur were clutching at each other, arms wrapped around each other in fear as the soldiers moved around them, and one of them swore, “Fuck, we’re being shot at!”

Shot at.

Merlin had heard all about it and seen it in films his mother didn’t like him watching at night, but none of them were like this!

“One pistol and a long,” Bedivere called out to his soldiers. “Tight E&E, protect this package at all costs, and get the others to land and capture!”

He turned to the boys and shouted, “How many people are down there?”

“About two or three,” Arthur shouted back, only barely able to make himself heard over the sound of the rotating blades.

“But they called for back-up when we escaped,” Merlin added.

Bedivere nodded, relaying this to the other solider in the piloting area, who shouted this into the radio.

Then Bedivere, making sure they were well inside the chopper, went with the other soldiers, slid the door open part way, and pointed his rifle right outside.

“Arthur,” Merlin said, pulling Arthur close to him, careful with his grip. “I’m scared.” Because he was and he didn’t care if it made him a big baby, anymore.

“Me too,” Arthur said simply.

Merlin gave a choked-off laugh and pulled Arthur even closer, wrapping his magic around Arthur’s rib to help him, and around the helicopter to protect the soldiers standing there in the open door, defending them. His muscles screamed and his soul protested, because his magic was still scared, but so was Merlin and he didn’t want anyone to die.

Then Bedivere started firing.

Both boys pulled each other close, and Merlin shut his eyes and buried his face in Arthur’s hair as Arthur hid in Merlin’s neck, but it did nothing to block out the sounds of gunfire over the helicopter motor or the smell of engine oil and gunpowder around them.

The fight was short.

Bedivere probably thought they couldn’t hear him, but Merlin felt Arthur tense up when one of the other soldiers said, “Both of them down, sir, one wounded, one dead.”

“Delta-6 is three minutes away, Delta-5 is on the ground and ready to apprehend,” the man at the radio said.

“Good!” Bedivere called.

Then Merlin felt a large hand on his shoulder, and looked up to see Bedivere crouching before them again.

“Don’t worry, boys,” he said, as the soldiers slid the door shut behind them. “It’s over. You’re going home.”

~*~

Merlin and Arthur never let go of each other the whole ride over to wherever it was they were headed. Bedivere seemed worried about them, but let them be, and so Merlin kept himself pressed up against Arthur the whole way back, letting what meager magic he could get wrap around them both to keep them upright.

They flew for a long time, Bedivere regularly asking, “How’re the ribs?” or “How’s the neck?” When they neared wherever it was they were going, Bedivere had the pilots radio someone, telling them where they were going, and Merlin heard him list off his and Arthur’s injuries.

When they landed, Bedivere unbuckled them without asking them to move, but once they were free of the strappings, Bedivere pulled them off the seat and towards the side, where the door was opened, again. Holding each other’s hands, they inched forward. They were crouching by the edge, waiting as Bedivere and his unit hopped down, then reached up and lifted them down.

“Where are we?” Merlin muttered, looking around.

“Airbase of some kind?” Arthur offered once their feet were firmly on the ground.

They were in what appeared to be some army barracks somewhere, and they were down specifically on a runway of some kind just a short way off from what appeared to be an air-hangar.

As soon as their feet touched the ground, hands still joined together, they heard loud shouts of “Arthur!” and “Merlin!”

Both boys’ eyes widened, and turned to see their parents shouting from the door of the air-hangar.

 _Mum_ , Merlin thought, and Bedivere, laughing, stepped aside as they took off, Merlin holding up Arthur from his broken ribs – but Arthur, in his delight didn’t seem to feel them.

It was with a rush of relief that Merlin ran into his mother’s arms. There was no place in the world like it, never was and never will be.

[ ](http://deathjunke.livejournal.com/112887.html)

“Mum,” he said, on the verge of sobbing in joy as she pressed her lips to his forehead.

“Merlin,” she murmured in his ear, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, god, Merlin – you’re back, you’re back, you’re all right, Merlin…”

He was back. They weren’t in that horrible room anymore, they weren’t scared, and they weren’t hostages anymore.

And he was still holding onto Arthur, who beside him was getting being held tightly about the waist by a frantic Uther.

Merlin heard the sounds of an approaching ambulance and saw those beds on wheels they have in hospitals and clung even tighter to Mum, and to Arthur.

“We’re going with them, to hospital,” Mum said in his ear as he buried his face in her neck. “Don’t worry, the King and I will stay with you and Arthur. You’re not leaving our sight for quite a while.”

“Good,” Merlin said into her neck, and she pulled him even tighter.

Distantly, he heard a camera clicking.

He didn’t know it right then, but one of the world’s most famous photos had just been taken.

~*~

 _**The Britain Boys Are Back!** _

_Coming to you live from the United Kingdom:_

 _Over a month ago, Arthur, Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister, Hunith Emrys’ son, Merlin, were kidnapped together by the Blesseds, an extremist sect of the magic-rights activist group the Avalon Mages. Just last night, however, the boys were rescued from a warehouse in the middle of Anglesey, a small island off the Welsh mainland._

 _The boys, themselves, had played a critical role in their own release. The details are unknown, but the boys had somehow managed to escape their captors and evade them long enough to gain access to a telephone and call for help, a call which was traced to their location, allowing a helicopter extraction team to be immediately deployed._

 _During the take-off from the warehouse they were being held at, they were attacked by two of the offenders. One was killed, and the other was severely wounded. A third offender was later found inside the building. There are reports that more associates of the two attacking captors were seen approaching the building, and they had seen the conflict and retreated – but not before being spotted and followed by one of the helicopters. The hunt for the retreating associates is on, and the wounded captor is currently in a hospital under MI5 custody, waiting interrogation to learn more about the elusive Blesseds._

 _While the nation has been witnessing the boys’ maltreatment on a daily basis through photographs being sent by their captors, their wounds had never been more serious than broken fingers – until their escape. They came out with severe dehydration and minor malnutrition, as well as a plethora of cuts and bruises all over their bodies. Merlin Emrys was reported to have more severe bruises and some minor burns around his neck and a swollen throat, likely from the magic-suppressing collar he was seen to have been wearing during his captivity. Prince Arthur was also covered in bruises, and had some fractured ribs, though the extent of the damage in currently unknown._

 _According to some rumors from the air base to which they had landed after their rescue, the boys clung onto each other from the moment they were attacked while in the helicopter, and haven’t let go since, even on their second helicopter journey to hospital – an amazing testament to the trauma they have gone through, especially considering the intense hostility the boys had infamously shown to each other in the months preceding their kidnapping._

 _The two families – both of the boys, Prime Minister Emrys, and King Uther – are presently ensconced in King Edward VII’s Hospital, under a heavy guard surrounding the entire hospital and several streets around it. While details about their current condition are still unknown, there seems to be no evidence of severe or permanent physical damage. The extent of the mental trauma, however, remains to be seen._

 


	9. VIP: Very Important Parents

Even inside the hospital room, the boys wouldn’t separate.

“We’re sorry,” the nurse in charge had stammered out when faced with the King and Prime Minister both demanding explanations the moment they were able to see the boys after their respective treatments. “They kept asking for each other, demanding, really, bless their little hearts. This seemed much easier than us repeatedly having to put them back in their beds.”

“This” being the boys’ beds being pushed together into one large bed, the two boys themselves curled around each other like particularly affectionate kittens.

Both parents had sighed and sat by their sons’ sides while the nervous nurse continued to check on the boys and adjust things accordingly. The boys both had oxygen masks on their faces, with various IV lines and monitors hooked up and tucked in to their bodies. Arthur’s heart rate was still a little fast, his breathing erratic. Merlin’s breathing was shallow, as was his magical influence sphere.

“Both boys will have trouble breathing normally for a while,” Gaius said. “Merlin splinted Arthur’s ribs fairly well, so thankfully once they were treated the damage was minimal. The burns around Merlin’s neck should fade as he regains use of his magic, and his throat may constrict some more, but not completely, and soon the swelling will die down. The physical scars should be minimal.”

“And their mental scars?” Hunith couldn’t help but ask. “How will all of this fare on their minds?”

Here, Gaius sighed and put the boys’ charts back into the racks on the beds. “That remains to be seen.”

“At least they’re recovering,” Uther said, and Gaius had left soon after, pausing only to grumble about the guards asking for identification going in and out of the room. There were body guards, policemen, and soldiers all over the hospital, and covering the entire block. They were putting all their eggs in his handbasket and no one wanted to take any chances.

Not again.

Soon, though, with the exception of two soldiers in the distant corners of the room and one nurse whose entire shift has been relegated to sitting in the room and watching over the boys, they were alone.

“…It’s such a daze,” Hunith murmured, looking down at the boys. “And so heart-wrenching, everything they’ve been through. It’s even worse now than in the pictures.” She paused. “I can’t stop seeing all the bruises.”

“I don’t think we will ever stop seeing them,” Uther said, reaching out to gently brush his fingers through Arthur’s hair. Arthur mumbled in his sleep and leaned into the touch, and Hunith smiled as she wrapped her hands even tighter around Merlin’s, before impulsively leaning down to kiss his reddened knuckles.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let him out of my sight again,” Hunith said. “At least for a while.”

“I wish I could take Arthur on state visits with me,” Uther said, nodding in empathy.

For a while, they sat in silence again, before there was a timid knock on the hospital door. At a gesture from both of the nation’s leaders, the solider closest to the door opened it.

“Hello, Geoffrey, Godwin,” Hunith said. Geoffrey was an old-time friend and long-standing publicist of Uther’s. While Godwin and Hunith hadn’t known each other for that long in comparison, he’d been a godsend during campaigns and elections, and was a good man and brilliant PR agent.

“We thought we’d update you on the matters of state,” Geoffrey said, holding onto one of his files, Godwin onto another. In the recent weeks as Uther and Hunith has spent more time together than was usual for a monarch and minister (but was perfectly reasonable for worried parents), the two men had worked out some new system to keep up with the overload of information concerning the two leaders coming from the media, and now worked together to manage it all.

“There have been some critics upset about you two suddenly vanishing from the public eye,” Geoffrey started. “Mostly the same ones that were upset about your drops in appearances over the last few weeks. But they are few and far in between – even your opponents are mostly sympathetic, right now, demanding that the nation give you time to properly reunite with your children.”

“Some news columnists are getting tetchy about the amount of time you two are spending together, but most people are thankfully sympathetic...and the number of those columnists who don’t have children certain helps,” Godwin threw in. “The vigils have changed from finding the boys to wishing their good health – most of them have descended into celebratory parties, which is up to you to decide if they are a good thing or bad.”

“There’s the usual lark,” Geoffrey said. “Of people nervous about how close you two are getting. Some worry that the monarchy will try to gain more power than it should.”

“Lovely,” Uther muttered sarcastically.

“There are some tabloids insisting you two have fallen in love, or at least in each other’s beds and arms, in grief-driven passion,” Godwin said, wry and amused, and both leaders winced.

“Some new controversy has arisen, though,” Geoffrey added. “Over magic. Some are insisting this is more proof that we should be tightening rights of magic-users, while others call this proof we should be loosening it.”

“Tightening,” Uther said, while at the same time, Hunith said, “Loosening.”

They both looked sharply at each other, but Geoffrey’s paper-shuffling drew them away for now. This was something they would have to talk about, but later.

They continued down the lists. Various world leaders had expressed congratulations at the boys’ rescue. They’d cancelled several state visits over the last few weeks, and most of those cancelled guests didn’t seem to mind, parents themselves, though a few seemed less than genuine, seeming to express content only due to pressure of so many other leaders doing the same.

Eventually, though, once they were updated on the matters of state, Geoffrey took his leave to go and get updates from his own secretaries and assistants, while Godwin paused at the door to say to them, “William and Leon will be in shortly – they have some security information they wish to share with you.”

Hunith nodded, as did Uther, and they were left alone again.

“We will have to go, soon,” Uther said. “Attend to the nation.”

“I dread it,” she said bluntly as she looked down at the boys.

“So do I,” Uther muttered, before he sighed.

A soft sound came from the bed, and Hunith saw Merlin shifting, and in response, so did Arthur, until both boys were blinking awake to the dim hospital lighting.

“Mum?” Merlin asked.

“Right here, sweetheart,” she said, leaning in to kiss his forehead.

“Father?” Arthur asked from the other side of the bed.

“I’m here,” Uther promised, wrapping his hand carefully around Arthur’s shoulder, smiling down at his son.

Both boys smiled at the sight of their own parents, if smiling nervously at the other parent present. Hunith started straightening the blanket while Uther pressed the button alerting Gaius that the boys were awake.

“How long have we been asleep?” Merlin asked.

“About a day,” Hunith said. “We got to this hospital at about midnight, and you boys slept a whole day and a half, passing midnight again. It’s four in the afternoon, now.”

Merlin stared, while Arthur raised his eyebrows disbelievingly.

“You were sedated,” Uther explained. “And then you woke up at about noon today, barely – you both went back to sleep right after, until now.”

“You must have been exhausted,” Hunith said.

Merlin nodded.

The boys moved closer to each other, and Uther and Hunith shared a look.

This was another thing they would have to talk about later.

Arthur slowly pushed himself up with his Father’s help, and Merlin and Hunith followed suit, until both boys were leaning up against their own pillows, taking in the nurse and the two soldiers.

“Where are we?” Merlin asked.

“King Edward VII’s Hospital,” Uther answered.

Both boys nodded, clasping each other’s hands again.

There was a knock at the door, and a pair of familiar faces walked in.

“Will!” Merlin said happily. “You’re all right! I couldn’t see you after they grabbed me – I wasn’t sure if you lived.”

“I’m tougher than that, kiddo,” Will said affectionately, completely belying the series of scars over his left temple and the bandage he still had taped over his right eye.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” Arthur said more simply to Leon, who wasn’t faring much better.

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

There was a momentary pause, then Merlin said, “Can I have something to eat?”

“Me too,” Arthur said.

“Of course, boys,” Hunith said, and gestured for the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair, to be woken up.

After apologizing profusely for falling asleep, she quickly left, and returned scant minutes later, a soldier and two guards behind her, pushing a tray with food brought in by Uther’s people for the boys, tested by the security forces and approved by the hospital. It was almost a small feast, a two-course dinner cramped onto one plate for each boy, and the boys delightedly dug in, famished with only IV-line nutrition in their bodies since their escape.

Hunith and Uther stood up to stretch their legs a little, smiling as they watched the boys easily shift food between their plates so they each had the most of what they liked, gobbling down the food with little care for manners. For tonight, neither of the parents minded – the boys deserved peace.

The moment was broken, though, as the two solemn-faced guards approached them quietly, the boys distracted with the food.

“Ma’am,” Will said quietly, as Leon whispered to the king. “There’s something a little urgent you will have to deal with – we can take you to the conference room and brief you now while the boys are distracted with their meals.”

“Can’t you brief us here?” Uther asked of the two guards.

“…we think it’s best you be able to hear first and decide, if the boys should hear this,” Leon said. “It’s…complicated.”

Hunith sighed, but nodded, and checking to make sure the boys were suitably happy, Uther and Hunith both promised their children they would be back soon, and left, the two heads of security following them.

The floor of this wing of the hospital had been left up to them and their security forces, and Will said, “We’ve got the conference room, door at the end,” and they went in.

“Please have a seat, sir, ma’am,” Leon said as they reached the end of the long table, well away from the few guards grouping together over layouts of the hospital on the other end. Hunith and Uther did, as Will dismissed the other guards, leaving only a few soldiers at the other end of the long room.

“You have heard the boys’ accounts of how they escaped? From after their helicopter landing, before they were airlifted here?” Leon asked, keeping his voice low.

Whatever this was, the two body guards wanted no one to hear, not even the soldiers at the end.

“They were attacked by an irate Collins, managed to knock him unconscious, and took his phone to call for help after they ran away,” Uther said. “That was all they said, really.”

“Tom Collins is what we need to talk about,” Will said as he approached.

“Do you have him in custody?” Hunith asked.

Will and Leon shared a nervous look, before Leon said, “No…the boys appear to have underestimated their strength, physical and magical.”

“What do you mean?” Uther demanded.

“We have Tom Collins’ _body_ in custody,” Will said bluntly.

Hunith felt the blood drain from her face, and beside her, she felt and saw Uther go rigid at Will’s words.

“Are you saying…?” Hunith started.

“They killed Collins,” Leon said, nodding once in affirmation. “It wasn’t immediate, I don’t think – but by the time our extraction team reached the room they were being held in…”

“The boys obviously don’t know, yet,” Will continued. “And obviously, if this information goes public, they will find out.”

Hunith dropped her face into her hands. She knew what a hostile and unprecedented situation it was, but to hear her boy, her little boy, had killed someone, even by accident…

“They are _thirteen years old_ ,” Uther said in horror. “Barely! If they find out that they actually killed Tom Collins…”

“We can’t possibly let them find out,” Hunith said without looking up. Her little baby – this would break him.

“If this gets out,” Will said, before he just sighed. “Ignoring what people will say about the barbaric nature of monarchy and how destructive magic is, this will…”

“We know how they managed to get through our security,” Leon said.

“They utilized the fact that the boys were regularly interacting, but we, their respective security teams, were not,” Will said.

“That probably won’t be an issue in the future,” Hunith said. “The boys refuse to leave each other.”

“That might not be a good thing,” Uther said. “They seem more dependent on each other than anything else.”

“Do you want to be the one to split them apart?” Hunith demanded.

Uther didn’t respond.

She sighed, looking up at Will and Leon, who were standing together somberly.

“About the information of Tom Collins’ death?” Leon said, sliding the details across the table.

She read the details, what the coroner said about the death, what the reports said and what the evidence was, but no conclusions were drawn from it just yet. Uther read over her shoulder, before sitting back, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“…who were the soldiers that were there during the boys’ account and the extraction?” Uther asked.

“Units J, K, and L of the SAS Air Squadron,” Leon said. “Why, sir?”

“See if you can find one who will report that when he got to Tom Collins, the man had woken up and was stumbling around, trying to find his way out – and that upon seeing soldiers, he resisted, and the ensuing violence and trauma to his head was what finally killed him.”

“Perjury,” Hunith said, with a bitter, almost hysterical laugh. But only almost, because she was the Prime Minister, now, she wasn’t allowed to be hysterical.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Uther demanded, before looking to Leon. “Is there any evidence written down of the truth?”

“None,” Leon said. “We have the boys account of their escape, but it’s only the extraction team’s story that Tom Collins was already dead when they got there that confirms the boys were the ones to kill him. Their testimonies haven’t been written down, yet.”

“Make sure they never are, not these versions,” Uther said. “Find a solider who will say our story. If it comes down to it, tell him he will be handsomely compensated, if you can’t find a way to make sure he doesn’t know the truth while saying our spin. Make sure any and all traces of evidence – paper, digital, magical, anything suggesting the boys might have played more than a small part in Tom Collins death – is destroyed. All of it.”

“Yes, sir,” both men responded.

“Downplay all this,” Hunith added. “Speak as little about this side of things as possible.”

“Of course, ma’am,” Leon said.

“This information never leaves this room,” Uther said.

“Never leaves us,” Hunith added, glancing over at the soldiers at the end of the room, the ones who still couldn’t hear them.

The two guards left them to start the process, and Hunith sighed as she leaned back in her chair.

“Let’s go back,” Uther said. “I think we could use it.”

He was right.

Seeing Merlin’s face again, even cut and bruised up as it was, was a breath of fresh air.

 _He killed someone_ , the back of her mind said.

 _And only we will ever know_ , the rest of her promised, before she strode forward, and wrapped her boy in her arms.

“You’ll be safe, Merlin,” she promised her confused son. “I promise. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”


	10. Epilogue

“Ow, that bloody hurts, you prick!”

Merlin rubbed his arm where Arthur had punched him while glaring balefully at the prattish prince.

“You deserve it,” Arthur said, handing his pajamas to Leon, before smoothing down his fresh, designer street clothes.

“I was just saying-”

“Do you really think that after all we’ve been through, I would just forget you? Pretend all this never happened?”

“I was a little scared you would,” Merlin admitted.

Arthur shook his head and punched Merlin’s arm again – _“It’s affection!” “What kind of affection is that?” “The manly kind!”_ – before he turned and asked his bodyguard for a pen and paper, and Merlin took his own street clothes from Will and went to the loo to change.

They were being discharged from the hospital, today.

Merlin changed quickly, walking back out to see Leon checking through Arthur’s overnight bag, carefully tucking his clothes in as Arthur was furiously writing something on the pen and paper Leon got him.

“Arthur?” Merlin asked, shoving his own bundle of clothing into his overnight bag as Will and Leon went to talk quietly in a corner about their security detail.

“Yeah?” Arthur asked, apparently putting the finishing touches on his note before looking up at Merlin.

“What are you doing?” he asked, leaning over to get a good look at what appeared to be a list of palaces, phone numbers, and extensions.

“Making a list of ways for you to call me,” Arthur said easily, before handing the list over to Merlin. “The palaces, the numbers for the actual staff instead of just the public numbers, and then the extensions for my rooms.”

Merlin smiled and shook his head as he looked down the list of phone numbers. “Posh git,” he said with a smile. “How do you even remember all these phone numbers?”

“…I just asked Leon, actually,” Arthur said sheepishly. “He remembers. Hopefully Father will soon let me get a mobile, so I can just have one phone number no matter where I go.”

“I only have one, for my room at Number 10,” Merlin admitted, grabbing Arthur’s pen and writing the number on the prince’s palm. “Though sometimes I just use Will’s phone…um, I don’t remember the number, but I think Leon already has it so you’re fine, I guess.”

Arthur nodded a little morosely, as he read the digits on his palm, before looking up and saying, “Have you heard about our parents talking about sending us to school together, whenever we go back?”

“Mum wants me to finish this year with private tutoring, go back to a proper school next year,” Merlin said with a shrug.

“My father does, too…maybe we can do it together!” Arthur said cheerfully.

“Not school,” Merlin said. “I mean – Eton doesn’t allow sorcerers, none of your posh Public schools do.”

“Sod them, then,” Arthur said. “I’ll go to your school.”

“…I really, really doubt your father will let you go to a state school,” Merlin said.

Arthur sighed. “I know…we’ll figure it out, or they will, I guess.”

Merlin smiled, clasping Arthur’s hand on his own.

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it – we’re the Britain Boys, remember?” Arthur laughed.

“Yeah, yeah…well, it’s not like we have to worry about losing touch. I’m pretty sure our parents would love to have us together at every PR event possible. Not to mention we can tag along to the weekly meetings.”

“I think they might be more concerned about matters of state than our feelings,” Merlin mused. “But Will and Leon are keeping in touch, anyway.”

They looked over to see Will and Leon still talking, Will gesturing wilding with his arms as Leon made complex motions with his fingers.

“I think we’re covered,” Merlin said dryly, looking back at Arthur as he folded his list of numbers and tucked it into his pocket. “I’ll see you soon, then?”

“Well we’re still on telly all the time…” Merlin laughed as he dodged Arthur’s half-hearted but fully-affectionate punch. “Yeah, very soon.”

“Boys?”

They looked over towards the corner to see Will and Leon were done talking and a nurse in the doorway.

She gestured all four of them out, and with the overnight bags slung over their shoulders, Will and Leon came over.

Will put a large, warm hand on Merlin’s back as he said, “C’mon, it’s time to go.”

Merlin nodded as Will gently, but firmly, led him out and into the hallway, Arthur right beside him with Leon behind them all.

“Goodbye, Merlin! Goodbye, Prince Arthur!” their nurse said as she crouched down to hug them both one more time each, before quickly running off to her next patient at the sound of her pager beeping.

As they walked to the lift door side-by-side, everyone said goodbye to them – nurses, doctors, patients, all poking their heads out of wards and rooms to wave at them and wish them goodbye.

“Bloody hell, we’re famous,” Merlin muttered in the lift.

“You only just noticed this?” Arthur asked sardonically.

“I’m not used to this,” Merlin said. “It’s one thing to see pictures of yourself all over the place, and another to have complete strangers want to say goodbye for no reason than because they want to know you.”

Arthur just stared at him, and Merlin elaborated. “For most of my life, my mum was just another MP or whoever or whatever, then barely two years ago, she starts going up party ranks, then she’s elected by the party and boom, we’re famous across the country when not too long ago…I’m not used to it. Not like you.”

Arthur laughed.

“Well _get_ used to it, idiot – at this point I’m pretty sure we’re more famous than our parents.”

Merlin nodded. “I know. It’s kind of sad, actually.”

Eventually, they reached the ground floor, stepping out of the elevator to see two lines of people from the elevator door to the hospital doors, applauding them on their way out, the clapping of other people in the reception area only adding to the noise.

Outside, there were two cars and two dozen reporters waiting for them.

He and Arthur waved at them rather apathetically, but the reporters went wild anyway, and Merlin smiled, amused by how easy it was to get them to go mad over such stupid little things.

“Should we try flipping them two fingers?” Merlin asked.

“No,” Arthur said. “Let’s save that for later.”

When they reached the cars, Merlin turned to bid Arthur one last goodbye, and suddenly found himself with an armful of prince, and despite all the cooing and the chorus of aww’s coming from the crowd, Merlin responded on reflex and hugged back.

“Father is being rather vague about just where I’ll be tonight, so I’ll call you when I can,” Arthur said in his ear.

“Good,” Merlin said. “And – bye.”

“You too,” Arthur said, before letting go and following Leon into the first car.

Merlin followed Will into the second car.

The moment the door closed on the noise and chaos of the outside world, the car became something of a bubble of relief.

“…I’m going home,” Merlin said.

“Yup,” Will said, patting Merlin’s shoulder. “Your mum says your room’s been cleaned and a nice dinner prepared for you.”

Merlin smiled at the thought, before yawning wide and long.

“Still sleepy?” Will asked. Merlin nodded, and chuckling fondly, Will gently pushed down on Merlin’s shoulder until he was lying down, his head pillowed on his bag in Will’s lap. “Sleep tight, we’ll be home in no time.”

Merlin nodded and shut his eyes and drifted off to sleep, dozing to the movement of the car around him.

They reached Number 10 just after sunset, and after Merlin’d had a brilliant nap. The door opened for Merlin to be greeted with more applause from more reporters and well-wishers, and Merlin hesitated, wondering why the hell these people found so much reason to clap for something as little as walking to his front door. But with a nudge from Will, he hopped out of the car, and put on a weary smile and waved. Again.

Their few staff took Merlin’s bag once he was inside the building, and Merlin was led to the small breakfast room table for a nice dinner with just him and-

“Mum!”

“Merlin,” she said, embracing him and holding on tight, and Merlin held on tight too, and for a while they just stood there next to their table as people moved and bustled around them, holding onto each other.

“Welcome home, sweetheart,” she murmured into his head as she finally started to let go. “How are you?”

“Tired, but fine,” Merlin admitted. She brushed her thumb over some leftover scrapes and bruises on his face, but smiled nonetheless and led him to the table.

It was a short and quiet affair, for which Merlin was grateful. When they were done, she went to her office to deal with running the country while he was whisked away to be prepared for bed.

Later, when Merlin sat on his bed after programming all of Arthur’s numbers into his phone, he gave it a long, considering stare, but didn’t think too hard on it as he crawled into bed, especially when Mum came in to kiss him goodnight, even tucking him in for the first time in years.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she murmured, petting his head. “I am never letting this happen to you again, Merlin, I promise.”

Merlin smiled and leaned into her touch. “Good to be back.”

She stayed for a little while, before an assistant quietly knocked on the door and told Mum she was needed for something urgent concerning matters of state, and she kissed him on the forehead one last time before leaving, shutting the door quietly behind her, not taking her eyes off Merlin until she was gone.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Merlin lit up the room with his magic, at first doing what he usually did and creating shapes across his walls and through the air.

Then he made a small, bright, Gameboy-sized square of light, and anchored it to his scrying mirror.

Merlin snuggled into his blanket as he realized he and Arthur had left the books and Gameboy in their holding cell. Maybe someone from the security team’s found them by now, and they could get it back? Or would the Blesseds have destroyed them, due to the emotion-traces they would have been saturated in, calling out to the trained sorcerers of MI6 forensics? Or maybe-

The phone rang.

Merlin smiled as he looked at his phone set, and read the display. He shook his head when he saw _Arthur Buckingham_ on the little screen, before reaching out and picking up the phone.

“Took you long enough!” Merlin greeted Arthur with. “I was starting to worry that you’d forgotten me.”

“Like I’d actually forget to call you,” Arthur said. “It’s not my fault Father insisted on a Welcome Home dinner.”

“You too?” Merlin asked.

“Yeah – and you won’t believe this: Morgana hugged me. She actually hugged me! She wrapped her arms around me and everything, and she wasn’t trying to strangle me, even…it was weird!”

Merlin laughed. “She’s not _that_ bad-”

“You’ve only met her once, I’ve known her my whole life,” Arthur said. “She is, in fact, that bad.”

Merlin chuckled, his own amusement leading to a moment of oddly comfortable silence.

“Hey, Merlin?”

“Yeah?”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“We’re home.”

The laugh bubbled out of Merlin before he could stop himself, and looking around his room, cocooned in the fake Gameboy-eqsue light and warm duvet and his mother’s hugs and kisses and Arthur’s voice in his ear, all he could say was, “Yeah…we are.”

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG it's over! \o/
> 
> Huge thanks goes out to my Artist [deathjunke](http://deathjunke.livejournal.com) who made all the great art for the story (remember to go comment on [the art](http://deathjunke.livejournal.com/112887.html)!), my Cheerleader [misc_plinks](http://misc_plinks.livejournal.com) who made sure this story got *done*, and my Beta [torakowalski](http://torakowalski.livejournal.com) who made this story readable for you guys.
> 
> Today I start my first day of college (Brits: university level), so wish me luck, and please leave some comments for me to come home to and read before I pass out from course-crashing exhaustion. :)
> 
> And as I always say, don't hold back on your comments at all. I promise I won't bite, and I love hearing all your thoughts, no matter how long and rambly, or short and concise. Tell me what you liked, and tell me what needs improvement. This fic will have a sequel, so whatever you say will be taken to heart.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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